Van Morrison: Don't Start Crying Now

We've spent the last week travelling the Coral Coast. The name gives away what you'd expect from a place like this.
Now, I'm not really in a position to start whining - given I am indeed surrounded by turquoise waters and the beauty of what lies in coral - but I am feeling a little sorry for myself.


At Denham, a lovely little seaside town that was hosting their annual fishing festival while we were there, I had myself a little encounter with a big old serrated steak knife.


I cut the inside of my left index finger in a kind of deep semi-circle.
There was blood everywhere - including all over my steak.


I have an absolutely ZERO pain threshold and when I get a hurty, I am quite possibly the worst version of myself.
I have to admit to shrieking, crying, hyperventilating and remaining in a state of total convinction that no one in the history of the world has ever been in as much pain as I am.


So my chop chop in Denham was all of these things.


Coupled with the sight of about 47 litres of blood spilling out of my finger and I went into a state of panic. Somehow in all of this distress I managed to remember elevation, compression and ice-pack application to the wound before Husband man transported me to the medical centre.


And here I met Nurse Hayley.
She was really kind and really calm and really not at all understanding the limits to my pain threshold. When I wasn't blacking out from forgetting to breathe, I was, in my head, cursing this poor woman and her non-knife-hacked hands.


Hayley made the correct assumption that I "obviously haven't experienced childbirth". As though that was meant to soothe me. I spent my state of shock asking her - 
Why on earth would something like this happen to me? Why could it not happen to someone else? What did I do to deserve this?


And various other dramatics.


After some basic damage control - Hayley sent me off and told me to come back in the morning for a lookey-here and most likely the application of some stitches. The very thought of this terrified me and I was only able to sleep on account of pain medication.


So back in there the next day, Nurse Hayley begins to remove damage control bandages and was, I am sure, ripping apart what little of the wound had healed.
Husband man could here my shrieking and yelping from the waiting room.


A second nurse was called to hold my hand and try to distract me with breathing excercises.


They applied some steri-strips instead of stitches. I assume this is because they couldn't stand what I would become with the application of needles and string into my flesh.
I then went home and called my mum, my shnanny and mother-in-law for sympathies.
All were oblidging.


What fabulous timing this all was as we embarked on a week of travelling the Coral Coast and all these pristine beaches and the Ningaloo Reef.


In what was an even more awesome eventuality, the only way I could participate in water based activities was to keep my hand covered, splash resistent and out of the water. No plunging into the depths of the sea.


Here's what the beacches look like, so there was no way I was missing out.

The only available option was to carefully put on a rubber glove and then stick that to myself with electrical tape. I heard little kids that we walked pass saying 'what's wrong with that lady' and calling me a freak.

It was really just the boost that I needed.


Then once in the water I had to snorkel with my hand sticking up out of the water. Husband man was literally dragging me along the coral beds as I held on to his toe with my good hand.


And so, I braved being a freakshow at Turquoise Beach and then again at Coral Bay.


But it was all worth it because this is a place where you can just swim about 10 metres from the shore and then follow the reef right there.
You don't have to get on some boat and be taken to the reefs - you can literally just walk out to it.


If you haven't heard of the Ningaloo Reef before - it's truly stunning and worth a a big old hike to Western Australia. There are hundreds of fishies and we even saw some turtles.


What we didn't do was swim with the whale sharks - the primary worthwhile activity in Exmouth. It was for this gypsy trip just a bit too cost prohibitive (about $400 each), but we intend on coming back some day cashed up.


We're now at Broome, spending our last few days enjoying the coastline. My chop chop is healing well and will be all ready to plunge into water just as we hit the outback.


From here we travel east to Darwin through the Kimberley region, about 2,000 kilometres in around 10 days. Yikes.