Yardie Creek Homestead

Monday 22 July 2024 we arrived into Yardie Creek Homestead for a week's stay. Pay for 6 and stay for 7, so why not!
Our trip down from Millstream Miliyanha camp ground was via an overnight stay at Barradale road stop in the Yannarie River. Again an uneventful and quiet evening.
The drive on both days was also easy going, but again we witnessed some strange folk riding push bikes. We even saw the Pink Panther fly past on the back of a motorbike.

Yardie Homestead is a largish camp ground, with nearly 200 individual sites. Most have water that you can fill your tanks up, but not to stay connected to. Power also is an interesting proposition, as you can plug in but only use the power for low drawing appliances such as lights, fridges, and charging small appliances, definitely no toasters, ovens, frying pans or air conditioning. We got around the restrictions by using our inverter to power the air fryer, toaster etc and then turned back to mains to recharge the caravan batteries. It has a small pool on site.
They have a cafe onsite open 7am to 8pm, with music on some evenings, and surprisingly nice sunsets.

Although it's sunny it can also be very windy and small tents aren't a match for this breeze. Ian even got up at 2am to sort out our caravan awning as we were caught out by the increase in wind speed overnight.

There's a few things to do along the Ningaloo coast, which is a World Heritage area of incredible beauty incorporating the Ningaloo reef and the directly adjacent Cape Range Peninsular with terrestrial, coastal and marine habitats. One of these is the Yardie Creek Gorge Trail walk. A class 4 walk, of only 750m return it is recommended allowing 1 hour for the walk. This trail is an extension of the initial Yardie Nature Walk, a class 1, 1.2km return walk of 40 minutes. We both took up the challenge and were rewarded with many fauna and flora sightings. Photos following of fig tree (winyjirr), bush tomato (garurlara), bush potato (gulyu), bush orange (burlirda), many fruit bats (gurralyajii), also the endangered black flanked rock wallaby (gujangganganhunghu). Although sited we didn't manage a photo of the Osprey (bilygurumarda).

We also noticed a few fossilised remnants in the rocks, as well as enjoying the spectacular terrain and views.

Whilst at the Creek crossing we saw several cars/caravans dropping tyre pressure to drive across the creek mouth coming northward or heading south. One unfortunate ute driver hadn't done due diligence and got bogged.
On our drive back to camp we dropped in to see some of the other beaches and caravan camping spots. Deborah was busy watching whales offshore jumping out of the water and got buzzed by a low flying RAAF PC9 plane. It even dipped its wings as if they recognised her from her Pearce airbase days.
We also encountered some wildlife, galahs and moths, and watched the tide rushing in at Tulki beach.



One of the other spectacular things to do along the Coast is to go snorkelling in the clear aqua coloured waters. We dropped into our preferred beach, Lakeside, just in front of the Milyering Information Centre, parked up and did the short 500metre walk to the snorkelling spot. With clear blue skies, with temperatures of high 20s with warmish water, which was cool but not cold. We donned our snorkelling gear, mask, snorkel and flippers and swam out to the reef. We were rewarded with such a miriad of beautiful coloured shapes and size of marine creatures. We were lucky enough to sight a turtle, black and white sea snake, and a ray hiding beneath the overhang of a coral outcrop. It was playing with us, moving around, peeking out then slipping back under. We were blown away with this being so close to the shoreline. It was even easy for Deborah to swim out too and float above. An underwater camera would have certainly provided us good photos but alas this has not made it to be part of our kit yet. Maybe next time.

Last snorkel day for us here and it was a beauty, absolutely no breeze and the skies were blazing blue. As we walked towards the Lakeside Sanctuary Zone we were privileged to see several Ospreys watching the procession of people walking by.

Today we saw another great selection of coloured fish and coral, and again the baby turtle came to say hello. From the bottom of the ocean, it gently floated up and took a breath or two then gently floated down to the bottom of the ocean floor. In fact it did this several times right in front of us. It was so beautiful to watch.
Yet again Deborah went further out from the shore to view the spectacular sealife below the oceans surface.
You will have to trust us, put it on your bucket list and come and see yourself.