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Published: January 28th 2010
The Pinnacles
What animal do you see?After two nights in Perth (time to try and wash out all the red dirt from our clothes) our next adventure was up the West Coast to a place called Exmouth. Didn't start too well with us waiting to be picked up outside the hostel. After 20 minutes we were thinking the tour had been cancelled. However, just whilst we running through our options to get up the coast the bus pulled round the corner. We were pleasantly surprised with this off-roading Isuzu 4wd bus that had pulled up, it looked much better than the bus we'd had in the red centre. Shouldn't really have gotten too comfy as that was actually only the shuttle bus to the depot and ten minutes later we were boarding a bus just the same as the red centre one.
Our tour guide was hilarious, but in an unintentional way. He talked non-stop about anything and everything. Talks about a historical event or an animal he'd seen would go on for at least an hour. His facts were quoted several times over and there were a few times he wasn't quite sure of the numbers - “It cost $8 million to install this... or
Sand Boarding
Andrew the professional was it $80 million? Well, somewhere between the two.” And his enthusiasm sometimes interfered with his driving abilities, not to an extent where we felt particularly unsafe, more to the point that we just couldn't stop laughing. The first time he'd forgotten the handbrake and the bus went rolling backwards through a car park with us all on-board. Then there was the Greyhound coach we tried to overtake but couldn't as the driver kept speeding up, so after a few seconds of racing side-by-side we ended up behind it for the next hour or so. At one point we went backwards instead of forwards at an intersection and there were a few times we pulled off the road to look at something, but usually at full speed. Normally this wasn't too much of a problem apart from the time that we were slowing down in the dirt and had to swerve to miss a road sign, and then again two seconds later for a pole!
Our first day involved a lot of driving to get us a fair way up the coast. We stopped to look at the Pinnacles which are these weird rock things that stick out of
Dolphin Swimming
at Monkey Mia. Amazing! the ground. Our guide gave us a talk about them, but with the heat and early start I missed the point, but they looked fairly impressive all the same. We were told that a lot of them look like different animals and things like that, the one I took my photo by looked more like a giant penis than any animal though to be honest. In the afternoon we went to a huge sand dune to go sandboarding. You basically sit on a candle-waxed oval board and skim down the sand (in theory). Now our group was all girls and me and Andrew, so when they were asking for volunteers for someone to go first I felt obliged to put my hand up. I completely ballsed up and flew off my board halfway down the dune, covering myself head to toe in sand and breaking my camera in the process (God knows why I still had it in my pocket.) Andrew went down next in a straight line looking like a pro (the bastard), the only unbecoming thing was his scream the whole way down. All in all it was hilarious, but the sand remained in my hair and ears
Who knew
that Dolphins and Pelicans got on so well for a few days after.
Our hostel was in the middle of nowhere, but as the tour company had decided to book the dorms for guys and girls seperately me and Andrew got our own room which was actually a welcome change to have a bit of space.
The next day involved a lot of lovely scenery and sightseeing, with the Z Bend Gorge and Nature's Window, all very nice and definitely worthy of a photo. Except I didn't have a camera. Luckily our two new friends Els and Maude from Belgium came to the rescue and were persuaded to become our official photographers for the rest of the trip so everything worked out ok in the end!
That evening we arrived into Monkey Mia, nothing at all to do with Monkeys and another one of those tour guide stories that went on too long, so I still don't know what the place name means. Something to do with Aboriginals and possibly the various settlers over time. Anyway, so it was a really hot day so we decided to go straight into the sea for a dip. We turned around to see people walking up the beach
the Z Bend
It was very hot pointing into the water with excited looks on their faces. I saw the fins coming towards us and thought it was all over and we were about to be attacked by sharks. Andrew actually made a dash for it, but as it turns out more fool him because they were actually playful Dolphins and the experience of swimming with them was absolutely unreal!
Day three was another early one, but I was up like a shot as 7:30am was the feeding of the dolphins. They pick people from the small group gathered at the bay to feed a fish to the dolphins and much to my delight I got to give the final fish to the last dolphin. They're just so amazing and were the reason that I enjoyed Monkey Mia so much. I half expected not to even see a dolphin, so I was obviously well chuffed to have had so much interaction over the two days we were there.
After a leisurely morning, we were back on the bus heading up to Coral Bay. We stopped off to view the Stromatolites which looked like fossilised Brocolli, but are actually the key to evolution. Whilst I'm thankful
for their existence, they weren't really much to look at. We stopped off in a, er, pleasant little town (full of chavs, drunks and generally odd looking people) called Canarvon for a few supplies. Was glad to be leaving 10 minutes later after being harassed by a drunk who insisted he was a surf champion, but nontheless needed $2 to buy more Port. We'd hit the Tropic of Capricorn which officially made the area suitable for growing tropical fruit and veg so we stopped at a farm and bought a huge Watermelon and a load of bananas. I would like to tell you they tasted better by being farm fresh, but they pretty much tasted the same.
What followed was a terrifying ride the rest of the way to Coral Bay. Every time I've ever seen one of those diamond shaped signs with a picture of a Kangaroo on, I've never actually seen one in the wild. Well, when the sun had set, all of the sudden the road was teeming with Kangaroos. We were braking and swerving left, right and centre. Even the Japanese girl who slept through most of the bus rides was wide awake with her
Stromatolites
Fossilised Broccoli - the key to evolution. Well who'd have thought? seatbelt on scanning the road for Kangaroos. After a couple of occasions of heavy braking we even had to seatbelt our Goon into a spare seat for fear of it flying down the bus and through the windscreen. Unfortunately one group of three Roos decided to scatter in all directions on our approach and one of them, as the driver put it, “is now asleep.” That's after he'd had to put it out of its misery because it'd bounced off our front Kangaroo bar. RIP. Needless to say, nerves shot to shit and traumatised from the Kangaroo death, when we finally pulled into Coral Bay I was in need of a Beer and thankfully the burgers prepared for our arrival were made of Beef and not Kangaroo!
Day four was a leisurely start and after breakfast me and Andrew headed off for a snorkel in the Ningaloo Reef. It's a Fringing Coral Reef, so you just have to step off the beach and the Reef is there. It was amazing to see all the tropical fish.
In the afternoon we drove up to our final destination, Exmouth. We made a Chicken Satay with Fried Rice concoction on the
A turtle
A guy in our group had an underwater camera - our disposable cam pics are still developing! Barbeque for dinner. The Japanese girl said that the Fried Rice was more like a Risotto, but no-one seemed to mind.
Our last day was spent on the Ningaloo Reef on a beach called Turquoise Bay. There's a riptide that pulls the current right across the bay, so all you have to do is walk to the far end of the beach, swim out to the coral and the current drifts you to the other end. The view was amazing, we swam with Turtles, Reef Sharks (which apparently don't eat people, but I wasn't planning on getting close enough to double check), Octopus and hundreds of colourful fish. The turtles were definitely my favourite, they're so majestic the way they soar through the water, and they looked so at ease even when we were all swimming near them.
The rest of the tour group were driving back down to Perth the following day, whereas we'd booked a flight and a couple of extra nights in Exmouth so our tour guide wanted to give us a send-off. We headed up to the lighthouse with our tin mugs of wine and watched the sunset eating Anzac biscuits (these oaty, coconutty biscuits, not that unlike a Hobnob). It was a nice way to end this part of the trip. Siobhan had told me when we were leaving Melbourne that she thought I'd like the West Coast more than I realised - she was right! Can't believe all the different wildlife we got to see and swimming with the Dolphins was definitely a highlight of the whole trip!
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