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Published: April 23rd 2008
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Let us say that this entry is dedicated to the 3646 kilometers (or 2266 miles) we drove in our little caravan over the 10 days we were in Western Australia.
Our plan was to rent a caravan, drive north to Exmouth, see whale sharks, then travel to some of the more remote Outback National Parks.
I had done my careful calcuations using the best of my knowledge, and thought I had correctly calculated the distance...but somehow measuring the kms against my finger....on a half-inch legend....in the travel guide's undersized map I learned has a fairly (very) large "margin of error". My error was by only 25% -- but when you are talking 2000 plus miles in Western Australia...that is a miscalculation working out to about a day and a half of pure drive time.
Western Australia from Perth to Exmouth is rugged beauty; deserts, sagebrush, views of the Indian Ocean, and small wonderful little towns.
We were told that it rarely rains...but just before we got there we saw on the tele that the remnants of a tropical storm hit the very area that we were headed.
We arrived to Perth in a bit of a
Playing rummy in the van
After a long day of driving we'd wind down by listening to Atlas Shrugged on our i-pod and playing countless rounds of rummy. rain storm, took a taxi downtown to pick up our caravan, stopped by the grocery store to stock up and headed north. Jessica is a fabulous navigator....but with the rain, the 5:00pm traffic in downtown Perth, and then driving on the left in a new-to-us camper....our first few hours were a bit stressful.
We decided to bust north and get to Exmouth as quickly as possible. We were on a mission to see the whale shark and the pesky monsters are shy.
You can see pictures of a whale shark at:
This whole trip we have been lucky...weather, travel plans, the sights..it has just been crazy. But our sojourn to Exmouth to see the whale shark was one for the books:
All the roads were still partly flooded on our way north...including the Great Northern Highway. Apparently the ground is so hard, and it rains so rarely, that the soil doesn't absorb the rain -- apparently had we come two days earlier we couldn't have gotten through at all. Exmouth was not crowded...and we were some of the first to get up there after the rain. We lucked out as the very next day after The kitchen
Our caravan came complete with a fridge, microwave (when plugged into a caravan site), stove, sink and pots/pans/dishes for two. we arrived they were having a trip out to the famous Nigaloo Reef to see the whale sharks (There were so few tourists - they were only having trips ever three days or so...something we didn't know until we got there).
We got up early and were on a boat of 20 people. The way it works is that all the boats from different companies share a spotter airplane. Each boat has 20-30 people each broken into groups of 10 on each boat. So with 4-5 boats there were about 100-120 people waiting to get their view of the elusive whale shark. Once the shark is spotted every boat races to the spot where the plane last saw the shark to get in line.
We somehow picked the fastest boat on the water...we somehow got assigned to group #1 on our boat and we were 2 of only 10 people --- out of over 100 -- who saw a whale shark the whole day. Everyone else had to wait three whole days to go out again.
Its quite an ordeal to see the whale shark even if one is spotted from the plane. Once you race to
the site the boat captain has to speed in front of the shark so that its first group of snorkelers can leap off the back of the boat swimming directly towards the whale shark. These things are huge - in fact the guides refer to them as a "London bus"...great. In theory when you see the whale shark coming at you you pick a side and swim like crazy to get out its way. Once it's passed through the group then you can swim next to its fin until your turn is done and the next group in the water is taking its turn. Jess and I were at the end of the line in our group swimming at the whale shark. We had time to see him swimming at us, then do a big sweeping 90 degree turn to get a better look at our group, turn and dive to the depths. Apparently he didn't like us much, we were just thrilled to see him at all.
But our great luck didn't end there....
For some reason we decided to head south the very next day to see some of the sights we had missed coming
A scene from our drive in WA
Long straight roads and flat dry land. Not much to see here - thank God we still love eachothers company :-) north so fast. We left at around 10:00 am...it started raining at 10:30....we kept getting into deeper and deeper floods across the highway as we headed south and the storm just followed us south. (BTW: when driving in WA it is much nicer to drive in the overcast and rain because the sun and heat are SO intense...so we like the rain...but not the flooding). We got about 400 miles that day.. the next day we found out that the highways were closed behind us...not expected to reopen for at least four more days..we would have missed EVERYTHING to the south....and maybe missed our plane.
We got to Exmouth just in time, we are two of the few who saw the shark, and then we left in the nick-of-time..all with perfect weather for us.
We had a great time in our little camper van...with over 1700 km to go in Wesern Australia...
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Michelle
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Yippee for an update! Sounds like the WA portion of your trip was blessed. Vegemite is the foulest creation ever. It most certainly should not be categorized as food. Keep having fun and know that you're missed!!!