Coral Bay

Coral Bay lies in the heart of the Ningaloo Coast World Heritage Area. Ningaloo Reef is just a few metres from the coast; at the same time, Coral Bay is the southern gateway and main base for exploring Ningaloo Marine Park. If you’re looking for a holiday with experiences on and in the water, you’ll find a range of options here, from swimming and snorkelling in sheltered waters to tours and wildlife viewing in the reef area.

Water experiences from the shore and by kayak

You can swim and snorkel from the shore in the sheltered waters of Bill’s Bay and Paradise Beach. The Coral Bay Kayak Trail offers a different perspective: there are designated buoys at four locations where kayaks can be secured. These locations are between 300 metres and 1.8 kilometres from the shore and are in the Maud Sanctuary Zone. Coral Bay borders this zone. This means you can plan for both shore-based activities and kayaking, with the distances from shore clearly specified.

Several operators offer tours from Coral Bay to swim with whale sharks. Trips to view the reef from a glass-bottom boat also depart from Coral Bay. These options offer different ways to experience the reef and its marine life: one tour focuses on swimming with whale sharks, while the other offers viewing from a boat. As you plan your trip, you can consider which of these experiences interests you most.

Wildlife and nature along the coast

About a 20-minute walk north of Bill’s Bay, you can watch up to 200 reef sharks gather in shallow waters from the beach between October and March. Manta rays are found off Coral Bay in the Ningaloo Lagoon, within Ningaloo Reef, at depths of less than 10 metres. Together with the reef close to shore, this marine life shapes the natural character of the place.

You can also take in the coastal landscape on foot. Coral Bay’s walking trails pass through parks and pristine beaches, past rock pools and areas where sea turtles nest. If you like to alternate between water activities and walks on land when planning your trip, you can take these different nature experiences into account. The nesting areas are a distinctive part of the landscape that the trails pass by.

A look at the town and how to get there

French’s Shack is part of the settlement’s history: it was the first building in Coral Bay. For air travel, Learmonth Airport is the nearest commercial airport; it is about a 90-minute drive north of Coral Bay. The drive from Perth to Coral Bay is about 1,200 kilometres and takes approximately 12 hours. These distances can help you decide whether to plan a long drive from Perth or include the commercial airport as your arrival point.

The Coral Bay boat ramp is about 2.5 kilometres south of Coral Bay. Visitors can launch and retrieve boats there to enter Ningaloo Marine Park. When choosing a holiday apartment in Coral Bay, you can first decide whether you’d like to use the town as a base for exploring the park.

If you’d like to expand your search to other destination pages, you can also find Carnarvon here.

For the overarching travel overview: Shire of Carnarvon.