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A giant plastic prawn
You can see this on the way from the airport to ExmouthOn arrival at Learmonth airport, we stepped off the plane to be greeted by a wall of heat and a swarm of flies, it’s quite a contrast to Perth some 1000km south of us which has seen changeable weather all the time we’ve been there. We picked up our rental car and drove the 38km into Exmouth with only a brief stop over in the middle of nowhere to take a photograph of a giant plastic prawn. We easily found our accommodation as Exmouth appears to consist of not much more than a main road and a shopping centre. The town itself is built onto the red earth in amongst the rocks and trees and is, well, unprepossessing to say the least. It does have one thing that I’ve not seen anywhere else on our travels though and that is Emus! There are loads of them about the town and they just walk up and down the sides of the road, presumably looking for food. We were told to watch out for them and for kangaroos when driving by the car rental agent who informed us that Emus have some road sense in that they look both
Rachy prior to a test snorkel
The waves behind show where the reef was - a long way out! ways before crossing the road, but cross even if they see a car coming, Kangaroos don’t even look. The chalet is located in a campsite and is a self contained semi detached studio apartment. Most importantly, it has air conditioning and a fly screen! We popped into the supermarket and got a few bits and pieces to have for supper and were shocked at the cost. It appears that you pay a large premium to have goods shipped up this far north. Having got ourselves sorted, the sun crashed down to complete blackness by about 6pm and we set ourselves the usual task of watching an episode of “This Life” and a couple of episodes of “Scrubs” before bed.
The next day, Rachael started agitating to go and snorkel with Whale Sharks as she had told everyone that she would be doing it while we were here. I was not 100% ready to go as my dizzy spells had not quite disappeared. I was made even less ready when we received an email from cousin Carol entitled “Shark Bait!” which prompted us to avoid any news outlet. Needless to say, I immediately logged into the internet and typed “Shark
Rachy on her perfect beach
... until she realised that there were no palm trees Attack” into Google where I discovered the lovely story of a woman who had had her foot bitten off while carrying her baby in shallow water about 100km South of us just the day before. Carol reckoned that at least the shark would be full for a while so we were probably safe to go snorkelling. I remained unconvinced. We decided to skip the Whale Shark experience that day and instead go for a trip out to Turquoise Bay where we might or might not go for a dip depending on how many other “food sources” were in the water. It turned out that there were enough that we were reassured that we could make a faster exit than some of them if we saw any suspicious fins, so we gave it a go. The coral reef was about 20 meters from the shore and there was a strong current that was dragging us sideways and eventually out to sea, so after a few attempts to reach the reef (which was virtually invisible due to the current stirring up the silt), we gave it up as a bad job and just sunbathed instead. The snorkelling was more in the nature
of an experiment to see if I would drown with an attack of vertigo before we made the commitment of booking the Whale Shark encounter as it was shockingly expensive. Happily, I managed it without any such attack, so, emboldened, we booked a tour for the next day.
At 7:30 the next morning, we met a couple of older people who were also waiting for the bus for the Whale Shark tour; Ron - a chap who was convinced that a war with Indonesia was inevitable because the country was full of Muslims, and his lovely partner Sandy who was embarrassed that he kept saying such things in public. The bus picked us up and then stopped at another resort a little way along the road to pick up 14 other people who were also doing the trip with us. All the men of the group turned out to be pilots who were flying themselves and their wives all the way down the west coast on a sort of package tour, and they all had their planes parked at the light aircraft runway in town. What a load of misogynistic boors most of them turned out to be! We
got dropped off at the boat ramp and made our way, 5 at a time, out to the main boat on a small inflatable dingy called a zodiac. Once on the main boat, most of the men, all around 50 I would guess, stripped down to reveal a distressingly large amount of flesh, hair and speedos. It was like being at a gay BeeGees convention. We were all whisked to an inner reef for a practice snorkel to see if anyone would freak out at having 10 meters of water below them and virtually no sight of land. Only one person succumbed to the fear and refused to go in again, so the rest of us were split into two teams who would take turns to swim with a Whale Shark should one be spied by the spotter plane. No sooner had we all climbed back on board than the shout came that a shark had been spotted and we were off! While we travelled to the sighting, we were given a briefing by one of the guides on the correct protocol to be used when swimming with these creatures. Basically, we were to be dumped in its path and
then once we saw it, we were to swim to the side and then we could swim along side it for a while until told to stop. We were told to get ready which meant putting on the goggles etc. and then sitting at the back of the boat, ready to jump in. Almost instantly, we were in the water and the guide indicated that she could see the Whale Shark. I couldn’t see a thing! The water was as clouded as it had been the day before. I looked up to see if the guide was pointing where I thought the shark should be, and sure enough, she seemed to be pointing directly at me. I looked down again, just in time to see a giant tail, a big as me, come out of the clouds of sandy water and almost batter me before disappearing again. I set off in pursuit, but it was travelling way too fast for me so I dropped off and waited to be picked up. I was knackered and decided that I would skip the next pass as the visibility was crap and the fish was thought to be heading out to clearer waters.
Rachy by a giant termite mound
I dared her to kick it, but she's no fun! Rach said that she was going to go again anyway (she is much fitter than I am and was probably enjoying the exercise!). By the time we were to go again, the shark had made it into much clearer water, so I decided to give it a go too. In we splashed and this time, I saw it pass directly below me - it was huge - about 7 meters in length I would guess. I turned to follow it along with the rest of the group and we all swam as hard as we could for as long as we could until the guide called a halt. As soon as we stopped focusing on the shark, we noticed that we had swum into a patch of jellyfish soup. There were hundreds of the buggers - as big as my foot all glowing a malevolent red colour. I was freaked out - as were a couple of other swimmers as we had no idea if these were deadly or not. Fortunately, I had opted to wear a wet suit so I was not as exposed as some - Rachy was just in her bikini. We all made a dash to
An emu visiting our chalet
Apparently, these birds can kick you to death! the little zodiac and clung onto it until we were allowed to re-board the main boat. Enquiring about the jelly fish, I was told “Don’t worry about them, they don’t usually sting”. I guess nobody told the jellyfish that as one of our group got stung all down his arm and leg and needed to have vinegar poured on it to try to lessen the pain. Fortunately, the sting was not fatal, but it does re-confirm my theory that Australians have no sense of personal danger. After the jellyfish encounter Rach and I decided not to re-enter the water as we had both seen the shark and did not fancy becoming cadavers. We spent the rest of the day on board the boat trying to avoid most of the other passengers and sunbathing on the prow. Unfortunately, one other chap followed us out to it and spent a tedious hour telling us how wonderful he was until his wife came along and promptly threw up over the side mildly speckling the deck with her regurgitated breakfast. Lunch was called shortly after this and we rejoined the main deck to have a little “gourmet” food; everything here in Australia is advertised as gourmet - even bloody pizzas! After a quick bite, we again escaped from the main deck and went up to the pilot deck which was small enough that only five or six people could be up there at any one time. It was wonderfully hot and the sea was fairly calm except for an enormous swell that did not help us to locate any other sharks. We spent the rest of the afternoon looking for things of interest - we saw turtles coming up for breath, tuna jumping out of the water to catch escaping whitebait, and at one point, far off in the distance a large splash that could have been a humped back whale. We set off in pursuit but, sadly, never managed to catch it.
The rest of out time here in Exmouth has been spent either lazing by the pool, or driving out to the local, and not so local, beaches to visit the indigenous fly populations there and invite them to feed on our flesh. Tomorrow, we return to Perth where we’ll be until Sunday when we end the Australian chapter of our voyage and open the Japanese one…
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Paul and carol
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Bird Fettish
The correct title for portly, hairy gentlemen over the age of 50 in speedo's is "Budgie Smuggler'. Now that would make anybody nauseous!! And I want to know what is wrong about a Gay Bee Jees concert - I'd give my right tooth to go to one of those!