Exmouth

A bit of a howling gale has come up this morning, and the sunburn on the back of my legs is stinging, so I don't really think the beach is the place for me today.

It was a bit quieter in our van last night.  We were left with Cooper once everyone moved out to the tent.  Funny how quiet it can get when there's just three of us.

What with the sunburn and the wind, we decided to drive around to Exmouth this morning and do some grocery shopping.  We drove up to the lighthouse again to see the view in the daylight.  We looked down on the thirteen antenna on the other side of the range, looking like a weird science fiction spectacle.

We met a geologist and electrical engineer up on top of the range  who said the antenna can't send signals through the salt water so can't signal submarines unless the sub has  an antenna above the water, but they do send messages to naval ships.  He is from Canada and studied these antenna for his masters degree or something.  He said there are only a few installations like this in the world. He is uniquely qualified in his field and works from Perth designing seismic equipment for the mining industry here.  His wife is from the gold coast and they have two small kids.

Next we drove in to Exmouth and poked around a camping store.  The owner chatted to us about fishing, and told us all about the antenna too.  He said they could talk to submarines under the north pole.  He also said the American's used to fly the personnel in with their cars, fuel and everything.  They built the airstrip at Exmouth and it used to be listed as an emergency landing place for the space shuttle when the space program was still running. 

Not sure how much of a fisherman story teller he was.

On the hunt for a few groceries we went into the centre of Exmouth. It's not very big, but there were two grocery stores, both IGAs, on opposite sides of the mall.  One was Exmouth IGA, and the other was Ningaloo IGA express.  I'm not sure what the difference was, but they were both very expensive.  We didn't buy much.

Today is the Queen's birthday public holiday here in Western Australia.  She is visiting Perth today for CHOGM, so they shifted the day back from Monday.  It got everyone out of the city so they could better protect the Queen.  She flies out tonight.  We did some school work anyway!  We had our holiday earlier in the year.

Later today we again headed off to Trisel beach to visit the resting green turtles.  We saw a lot again, and Grant and the kids and I enjoyed the walk along the beach at the end of the day.  Joseph encouraged everyone to collect the grass balls out of the bushes on the dunes and let the wind blow them down the beach.  One hopped and jumped it's way over a whole expanse of smooth rocks.  It looked like it was alive.

Cool again tonight.  23 degrees c at the dinner table.  Everyone has put on jumpers.  It's 17 degrees below what we were experiencing last week.

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Vicki