22 October - Quobba Blowholes and Point Quobba Snorkelling

22 October 2016 – 192 339

Quobba Blowholes and Point Quobba Snorkelling

This morning we drove north to the Quobba Blowholes. https://www.westernaustralia.com/en/Attraction/Blowholes_and_Point_Quobba/56b2669dd5f1565045da9a6c#/
https://www.carnarvon.org.au/point-quobba-blowholes
https://www.australiascoralcoast.com/destination/carnarvon-blowholes
These were quite different to what I expected as instead of one large hole it was multiple smaller holes.  Depending on how big each wave was, which holes “blew” and how high.  I was also surprised at the roaring noise they made, particularly when they were spewing mist rather than water. 

After watching these for a while we went slightly south to Point Quobba.  This is a very sheltered lagoon with an extensive coral reef inside.  When we arrived, the tide was on the way in, walking around we could see some of the corals, sea urchins, sea snails and oysters above the water line.  We relaxed in the shade and read our books for an hour or so while we waited for the tide to come in – we had to retreat to the car as the flies were terrible.  When we had our snorkel, we found the water was not as cold as Coral Bay thankfully.  The coral was quite colourful – blue, pink, purple, green and yellow – with the corals lighting up quite well in the shallow water.  Once again we saw many, many fish and again varieties we had not previously seen as well as many we had.  The fish ranged in size from a few centimetres to half a metre.  Next, we went back to the blow holes to see how they looked on the high tide.  There was much less roaring and “steam”, and some really big jets of water.  Amazing to watch!  While we were watching the blowholes we also saw two turtles swimming in close, as well as a school of large fish being pursued by a group of sharks further out. The cliffs above the blowholes had salt in all its stages of crystallization from saline to piles of salt crystals.  Hayden spent ages looking at this and collected salt crystals in a bag.  When we got back to the van, we went back to school work again for a few hours – getting close to done now.  We finished the day with a swim.  Today was warm as the wind has finally eased, so we all enjoyed the cool off.