WA Camping trip - Day 2

Our first morning waking up in the tent! Since we had Dinner on the smaller side the night before, we decided we would fill ourselves up with a bigger breakfast. We packed up the tent and headed back towards the tavern where we saw a petrol station with a cafe attached - which conviently sold breakfast!

After breakfast we headed to a place called' Hamelin Bay' (pictured bove). This cove was reccomended to us as a nice beach to visit, and as we ran out of time to visit on our first day, we thought we would slot the visit in fist thing on day 2 even though it meant retracing our steps slightly. And thank god we did!!

As we parked up there was an information sign titled 'All rays are protected in Hamelin Bay' - COOl!!! Rays!!! I was excited thinking that a creature was protected, but still did not expect what we were about to see.

We headed down to the beach and were greated with the whitest sand and the clearest, turquiose blue sea I have ever seen. We walked along the shallow tide in amazment before I spotted a black, circular shadow floating through the water. I remembered the sign in the back of my mind and quickly rushed over to see if it was infact a Ray, and it was! At this point we are assuming that they must be mantarays (otherwise surely there would have been warning signs right?!?) - but nope. These were Thorntail stingrays. Thankfully, these are a very docile species, and are very used to human contact. They were frequently approaching people in the water. Despite not having swimwear on, we still jumped into the water to have a closer look (and some photos of course), although we decided to keep our distance unless they decided to come to us, and luckily we were both greated with a very close encounter. Best part of my trip so far - an extremely happy egg.

Back on the road again to head towards our next planned stop, which was back past where we stayed for the night in Blackwood River National Park. We pulled in at a viewing point to check out the river and had a quick snack before getting back on the road.

We continued our drive and stopped in a small town called Pemberton to pick up a few snacks in the supermarket. We decided not to stop for long here as there wasn't much to see. This town was a great example of most the small towns we drove through in WA though. A main road passes through the centre of the town, with no more than 5 shops either side, and then small spread out houses from their.

Nest on the list was 'Peaceful Bay' - a beach we had found online and was conviently on route to our next camping stop. Conviently, since we hadnt eaten properly since breakfast, this beach was right next to a large caravan park that had their own fish and chip shop. So we decided to grab ourselves dinner to take down onto the beach with us. The beach was windier than expected, but it was still lovely to sit and chill while eatting our dinner.

Once it started to get dark, we continued our drive onto the second campsite of the trip. This was our most expensive site as it had a shower block. So after we pitched up, we treated ourselves to a lovely hot shower before heading to bed.