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Published: April 23rd 2013
After our campervan success on the east coast we decided to brave the Australian "Wild West" in the same manner. We took an early flight from Darwin so we would arrive in Perth with time to drive 200km north to Cervantes along Indian Ocean Drive. After picking up the campervan and stocking up at the supermarket, we were on our way. We somehow scored an upgrade with our camper, finding two gas hobs installed inside the van (so no more lurking outside to cook burgers in the rain) and also a microwave, toaster and electric kettle 😊 As we drove away from Perth, we soon had the sea on our left and huge sand dunes surrounding us. We arrived at Namburg National Park and the Pinnacles (just south of Cervantes) around 4pm, just before the visitors centre closed for the night and invested in a month long National Park pass for West Australia, as we figured we would be visiting quite a few parks over the coming weeks.
The Pinnacles are rocks which stick out of the sand over a vast area covering Namburg National park. No one is 100% sure on how they were formed, but agree that they
have been buried and uncovered throughout the last few million years. Interestingly, the sand around the Pinnacles is yellow and orange compared to that of the dunes which is white, which looks really weird! Our highlight of the Pinncales was the kangeroo and joey which we found lurking in the bushes and then spotting our first Emu as we left the park (credit goes to Hazel for spotting them).
We got up early and drove to Geraldton, where we arrived in time for lunch. We visited the museum of Western Australia, which has an exhibition on the multiple shipwrecks which occurred up the coast in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries . There wasn't a huge amount going on in Geraldton, and it had started to rain too, so we plumped for an early dinner in the campsite (the aptly named sunset beach - you could hear the waves from your dinner table-come-bed). We took to getting up and going to bed early whilst travelling in the van - sundown is at 6:30pm and it gets dark pretty quickly (and Hazel soon got bored of losing to Mark at 'Go Fish'...mis-spent youth perhaps?!), whilst from sunrise (6:30am) everything starts
to heat up...You don't want to have a lie in much after 8:30am, unless you are planning on driving with the air-con on full blast!
The next day was a short hop to Kalbarri National Park, which is a favourite holiday destination for "locals" as there is a sheltered bay for swimming and numerous adventure sports on offer. As we approached the park we drove past the pink lagoon, which gets its hue from Beta Carotene - algae which reacts with salt crystals (don't you know!). It was quite cool to see, but difficult to get close to from the highway, so we pootled on. At the first couple of lookouts (Natural Bridge and Island Rock), we were bombarded by flies which had us running for cover in the van. Despite the deserted beaches and warm climate, these flies are a good reason not to live here...They drove us crazy buzzing around our faces! We found a supermarket and purchased some repellant which seemed ineffective, so we invested in some trendy fly nets (which you attach to your hat and tuck into your collar) to make the experience more bearable.
Kalbarri town is a quiet little place where
the Murchison River meets the sea. There were some interesting POIs (excuse Mark's geek-chat!) including Rainbow valley, with coloured stripes of rock, and Red Bluff where the beach and surrounding cliffs were bright red due to the high iron content. Our campsite for the night was 3km down a bumpy unsealed road which was not enjoyed by our van, but we persevered with the thought of a cup of tea/coffee sitting over looking the beach. Our camping spot was great and we had an awesome view, but, again, we were chased inside by the flies. (We angled the van to face to sea, so we could sit in the back looking out!) Later on we walked down to the beach for sunset. The lady in the campsite office told us it was a 20 minute walk down, but it took at least 30 to traipse over the seemingly endless dunes - we were therefore pretty chuffed on the way back to be given a lift by said locals who were riding back up on quadbikes!
If you have ever wondered what Western Australia looks like, the answer is vast areas of nothingness. The ground is red-ish sand, but with
lots of green bushes and trees spreading out for miles. The roads are pretty decent, even in these remote parts, but stretch out in straight lines, so driving becomes an exercise in looking ahead for animals (dead or alive) in the middle of the road. We have seen a good range of wild animals out here including emus, kangeroos, cows, sheep, goats and a snake. We hardly pass any cars, only the occaisonal road-train and campervan - which we wave to as they cruise by, keeping us entertained as we soak up the KMs!
The next morning we crawled our way back along the bumpy track and headed 450km further north. We arrived in the afternoon in Australia's most westerly town, Denham. (Not bad for a coast to coast Australia trip!) This area is known as Shark Bay and was absolutely stunning...The sun was shining, it had warmed up to about 35 degrees but there was a constant breeze off the sea to keep you cool. Our campsite was right next to the beach, where the water was lovely and calm and, most importantly, the flies were gone! Mark wrote this section of the blog while looking out at
the sunset from the back of the campervan...Fantastic! We checked out the Stromatolites on our way into Denham, which were underwhelming to say the least, but apparently significant to life on earth, so we thought they were worth a mention (and a photo op).
The next morning we headed to Monkey Mia, only 28kms away, in time for the 8am dolphin feeding. The bottlenose dolphins have visited the Monkey Mia beach since the 1960s, when fishermen used to feed them scraps in the bay. The Department for Conservation has now intervened and humans are only allowed to feed a few dolphins a quarter of their daily fish intake, to keep them hunting on their own (whilst also keeping tourists visiting the national park and so keeping local funding going). With everyone lined up on the beach, the rangers invited the public to stand in the shallow water and the dolphins came right up the beach to swim infront of us. It was absolutely fantastic, and they were so comfortable with the rangers that one even brought in her young calf with her.
Having the camper just in the car park, we skuttled off for breakfast between the feeds
and then made the most of the lovely beach. It was then that we discovered the wild emus who strolled around like they owned the place. They literally walked among people who were sunbathing and that afternoon a couple of them followed us along the deserted beach while we were looking out for sting rays. We only discovered the sting rays after we went for a swim and saw one swim by - once we realised they were sitting on the bottom, we decided it was probably best to keep our eyes peeled when we walked through the shallows! The biggest one we saw was 2m long and we daren't approach it closely enough for a photo (well, that's our excuse for the poor photography anyway). Whilst walking along the beach we also had a pelican swim casually past which was new, as usually we see them eating pigeons in St James Park! After a sun-packed day we headed back to the car park where Hazel was harassed by a daring emu who chased her into the van and then tapped his beak on the drivers' window, much to her surprise.
Continuing on our way up to the Ningaloo
reef, we spent a night in Carnarvon to stock up on food (and replace Hazel's lost flip-flop, which we think is at the Billabong service station 800km north of Perth, but can't be sure). This was also the last point at which Vodafone had signal, so pretty useless for west coast travel. Mark was now so sick of instant coffee he splashed out on some proper stuff to use in our caffetiere (we were also surprised that the van came with one, but that is how we roll darling!) We plugged into our campsite pitch and went straight to the pool. We returned to find another fellow camper had set up his deluxe caravan on our site, so Mark enquired as to why he would do this. After an exchange of words, and a couple of flawed arguments later, he realised it was his error but was too installed to move, so we spent the night with our van right on the edge of our pitch and decided not to trust the common sense of other campers again! Mark's rant over...
The next day we headed to Coral Bay, which is a small resort "town" (if it can be
called a town, with only two petrol pumps and a bottle shop on its 'high street'😉 on the southern part of Ningaloo Reef. We spent most of the day on the beach and took turns to snorkel the accessible reef, which was only 50m out. We had a couple of good finds, as Hazel managed to photo a small stingray along the bottom and Mark was stalked by a large moody-looking fish who kept swimming right up to the camera and wouldn't leave him alone. That evening was the hottest yet, as there was no wind and the air was very humid (75%, according to Michael Fish). The campsite only ran on salty water and even the cold tap in the shower was warm, so it wasn't the best night to be sleeping in the van (salt water showers turned out to be the bane of Hazel's life, resulting in a serious case of 'beach hair' - aka a big, unbrushable bird's nest - which lasted for about 5 days!).
So, Coral Bay...the first (and hopefully last) time we've had the following conversation:
Mark: I'm too hot, i'm frying here
Hazel: Me too, can we stop sunbathing and
find some shade please!?
The next day we arrived in Exmouth, where there wasn't much happening either (seeing a trend with the west coast towns yet!?) - it's really just a base for people to access Ningaloo Marine Park, Australia's "largest and most accessible fringing reef system" and the Cape Range National Park. Even the local emus seemed to wander around the campsite looking for something to do. We found a model whale shark in town to entertain us and so stopped for a couple of comedy photos...Bring on the real thing tomorrow! The whale sharks were one of the reasons we had travelled all the way from Perth (Exmouth is about 1200km further north), along with the promise of some fantastic snorkelling on an (as yet) unspoilt reef system, and so we were pretty excited about seeing them. They are filter feeders and mainly eat planktonic organisms (I bet there are a few of you who are surprised I know what that is, let alone use it in a sentence), and have huge mouths to suck in the water. Quite impressive to see.
Bright and early the next morning we caught a glass-bottomed boat out to our
transport for the day, a motor boat called 'Draw Card'. We sailed to a sheltered spot inside the reef for our first (practice) snorkel. This was to try out the equipment and for the crew to gauge our swimming ability before throwing us in the water with the shark. It was a great snorkel, as we soon found a reef shark sheltering on the bottom next to a couple of stingrays buried in the sand. The water was warm and we were later told it was 31 degrees, which is so hot that the coral had been bleached (hopefully it will recover soon, as it is supposedly autumn at the moment).
It wasn't too long after morning coffee when the pilot of the spotter-plane above radioed down to say that she had found us a whale shark. We sped out through a gap in the reef and out to sea while the crew gave us a safety briefing - this was essentially "don't go near its mouth, don't try and ride it and keep a safe distance away from it", so not rocket science. The idea was to swim just to the side, behind its vision and to follow
the shark along in the water. The whale shark we encountered (named Charlotte by a little girl on our boat, as she hadn't been seen in the area before) seemed really curious about these strange people bobbing around in the water and kept turning to approach both us and the boat. She actually came right up to the bow, which is very unusual behaviour for a wild whale shark. The boat's photographer kept having to kick a trail of bubbles (which she confused with plankton, apparently) to try and coax her in a different direction. At one point, Mark was trying to photo Hazel alongside Charlotte, but she turned to face us instead and we both had to scramble to get out of the way of her mouth area...she is a filter feeder, and supposedly only has a throat the size of a human fist, but it still didn't seem like a good idea to get in the way of her metre-wide mouth! The moment was actually caught by the official trip photographer, so you'll have to see if you can spot us in the photo.
Our whaleshark was only 4-5m long (by no means a large one, as
they can grow to 12m) but a big enough fish when you are only 3m away and she turns right for you. The first time you get in the water with such a big fish gives you a bit of an adrenaline rush as you search all around to catch a glimpse but, once you get used to it and keep an eye out, it becomes fun and more relaxing. Maybe cage diving with real sharks next time?!
After the whale shark interaction, we had lunch on the boat and then went up the front for a bit of wildlife spotting - we saw two kinds of dolphins and a giant turtle swim past before a second opportunity to swim with a whale shark arose. Unfortunately, after getting all our snorkel kit on a couple of times and having our hopes dashed twice, the shark dived for the final time before we could even get in the water. We settled for a final reef snorkel before heading home for the day. We were pretty lucky by the sounds of things to have swum with such an interactive whale shark, and to have seen a female one - they don't
really know why, but most of the sharks that turn up in the area tend to be adolescent males. What a great day!
We should probably admit at this point that we stole a few photos for the blog from the professional photographer...but we're guessing you can work out which ones by the quality of her pictures (and because we're sometimes in them)!
On our final day in the Ningaloo Reef area we ventured into Cape Range National Park, which was absolutely beautiful. We made our way to Turquoise Bay, which was a fantastic beach as there was hardly anyone there. The sand was perfectly white and the sea was amazingly clear, so we took it in turns to lie on the beach or swim out to the reef for a snorkel. There was a slight breeze, so the air wasn't too hot on the sand and the water was warm enough to relax in - we have declared it our perfect beach as there was snorkelling for a bit of light entertainment when snoozing in the sun got too much...Mark's major find of the day was a sea worm, which was put to shame by Hazel's turtle
- although he does look a bit p*ssed off to have had a camera pushed in his face!
After Ningaloo, it was time to motor our way back to Perth, skipping out the scenic detours we took on the way up...this was probably for the best however, as the school holidays seem to have started and Mark turns out to be a bit of a Victor Meldrew about his camping pitch and gets very cross when small children play on it instead of their own one!
Whaleshark videos:
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Christine
non-member comment
Hazel got chased by an emu??! That certainly made me burst out laughing in the middle of my office. Quality!!