The night was very eventful with a large storm coming over Coral Bay with torrential rain – huge downpours which were deafening on the caravan roof…. At one point at around 1AM Trev heard a loud bang and woke me up… unsure what it was ?? a branch down?? – it did not seem too windy and we still had our awning up so we debated whether or not to put it down – Trev looked outside and could not see any issues so we went back to bed – the rest of the night we were restless listening to the rain and concerned whether we should put the awning up….

Come daybreak the reason for the loud bang became very apparent….. Klaus and Beryl’s caravan awning had actually had the roller section snap and collapse…. What a mess !!! Fortunately the caravan was not damaged but the awning was completely broken – it appeared that it had sagged with the downpour and the weight of the water had caused the aluminium roller to break in the centre!

Definitely a Branch moment…. He was hard to locate as he was fast asleep when the event occurred but was later identified hiding within the awning folds….

He and MacGyver quickly got to work to assist Klaus to disassemble the awning….

When Gordie got wind of it he was keen to try and salvage the awning PVC as it was better quality than his awning – and the same size!!! The PVC was pinched between the broken aluminium and Branch, MacGyver and Klaus left Gordie to it as they felt it was a no-go…

Gordie persisted for ages but could not extricate the PVC from the roller…. Finally giving in after about 45 mins of fiddling around…..

MacGyver cut the PVC off which Klaus kept and the rest of the remains of the awning was transported to the local tip in the Ranger….

Klaus was very concerned when he saw Rosie left with a couple of chairs near the dump point…. Had Dave dumped her there by mistake????

As it was Sunday we then had breakfast and got together in the Hunter Lotus for our next instalment of Exodus as the weather was wet and windy….making sitting outside impossible…

After the service we walked down to the bakery for coffee and baked goods…. Hoping the weather would improve!!

The sun broke through the clouds around midday but it was still fairly windy – however as it was our last day in Coral Bay we decided to go to Five Fingers Reef hoping for a snorkel as we had heard it was a great area to snorkel straight from the beach…

We drove out along the 4WD sandy track after letting the tyres down and made the short trip to Five Fingers Reef…

It was a beautiful spot but still very windy and the reef area was quite choppy….

We decided to snorkel anyway and were so glad we did – even though the water was a bit rough, and slightly cloudy we saw a huge variety of brightly coloured reef fish, clams, an octopus, corals and starfish – beautiful – we could only imagine how spectacular it would have been on a bright sunny day with no swell – absolutely awesome no doubt!

After spending some time on the windswept beach we headed back to camp to pack up and prepare to continue the journey north tomorrow…. Matt and Sharon had some good news – the whale shark swim they had booked for today that ended up being cancelled was going ahead on Tuesday…. and so they were able to drive back from Exmouth for the day to do their much anticipated dive with whale sharks!!!