North of Carnarvon, at the south end of the Ningaloo Reef, there is a very wild stretch of coast, where huge waves smash against rugged cliffs and blowholes release water jets metres high into the air. 
Signs warn about dangerous king tides which have claimed the lives of some unsuspecting fishermen and visitors. There is one “safe” snorkel area named “the Aquarium”, a large pool of water protected from the surf by a reef.
After trying to fight off armies of flies, we thought we give the snorkelling a try. I send Austin out to test the waters, but he quickly returned before being washed out to sea by the strong current of the outgoing tide. So we said “Blow the blowholes!” and headed off to Carnarvon a day earlier than planned.
There were still a few flies hanging around the city, but nothing as bad as we had experienced at the blowholes. The locals blamed the east wind for carrying the flies from the dessert to the coast.
Being a weekend and Mothers Day, Carnarvon had a lot to offer! We started the day with a haircut and a coffee in town, before heading to the race course for a big Racing Carnival. Thanks to the flies the local race fashion included head nets and the perfume of choice was Citronella. Carnarvon has 4400 inhabitants and not all were at the races, so there was plenty of space in the viewing areas. We managed to get a table right in front of the finish line! We also were right next to the bird cage and could watch the horses being paraded. But unfortunately that didn’t help our betting odds! In the first race our horse came last, in the second we did one place better!
Luckily there was no betting involved at the evenings speed races, just roaring motors, spraying mud and lots of fun. Even the youngsters showed amazing skills in handling the slippery conditions at high speed. How they avoided running into each other, I’ll never know!
On the following day we re-visited the old "space race” at the Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum. 
This was, of course, one of the tracking stations of the Gemini and Apollo missions. Interesting to see the now antiquated machines and control boards of the time! As part of the tour and projected onto the roof of an inflatable planetarium were 2 fascinating presentations about the moon and the sun.
When we first entered the station we were handed a buzzer- one of those square ones you get given for your pub food order. This one lets you know when it is your turn to enter a rocket capsule. Inside the capsule we had to lay back on black gym type mats, hoping that the previous “astronauts" weren’t suffering from excessive perspiration, before the door closed and we were left to a video and audio simulation of being launched into space. After a very real count down and huge fire balls outside the rocket windows had appeared, we were relieved to hear: "Houston we have lift off”. Eventually while the commentary from the control room continued, a few more stages of the rocket burned up and we were in orbit seeing the earth from above. 
Just so you know, we made it safely back to earth, and having had a good rest in space decided to join the National Breast Cancer Foundations “Mother'sday Classic”. The walk went along Carnarvon's beautiful foreshore and then crossed a lagoon towards the old mile long jetty now unfortunately under repair. The walk was longer than we thought, but Austin braved it for the good cause and got his medal at the end!