In which Jess gets spooked by big fish, and too many tourists

Rather reluctantly we left Point Quobba and headed for Coral Bay. We arrived in town (one main street) mid-afternoon to find it absolutely chock-a-block with people, caravans, motor homes and other vehicles. So far this trip we’ve managed to be fairly secluded (even places which had lots of vehicles parked where pretty deserted) but this place was diabolical. We found somewhere to park, then wandered down to the beach. Although jam-packed, it was quite pretty, and even had a kangaroo with joey hanging out on the sand. We walked along the sand for about 2km around to the boat ramp. Trucky checked out the fishing potential (virtually nil from the beach) and then we walked back into town.

The next morning we headed back to the beach for a snorkel. While the colours where not as impressive as we found at Quobba, there were lots of bigger fish around. Particularly impressive was a school of about 20 two-foot long spangled emperor that Jess accidentally swam into. She was “lots freaked out” and declined to go back into the water after that!! Trucky and I watched them for ages though. They came right into the shore where a man was feeding them. The emperor were fighting like seagulls over the fish, and they even tried to take bites out of a camera someone dropped into the water! There were also schools of sand whiting and some zebra-striped fish, as well as a few other fish too.