North up the West Coast from Perth

Friday 21st
We managed to be in our new little van by 11am and on the road north out of Perth. We stopped to fill up the fridge and then drove about 3 hours to Cervantes and parked up in it's one and only campsite. It is right next to the sea which seems to be dead calm; lucky as there is nothing to stop it flowing right up and into the camp which only appears to be about 1m higher than the beach. We walked out of town, disturbing a few kangaroos as we went, to Lake Thetis which is much more saline that the ocean and home to Stromatolites (ancient cyanobacteria that form huge lumps). There were loads of unusual plants that I have never seen the likes of before and all the time the sulphurous smell of the sea - it seems to be extra potent around here. Lake Thetis seems to be having a dryish period and there were several dead fish around the edge along with thousands of tiny spiral, pointy cone shaped snails. We wandered around the lake as the sun dropped and then walked back to the camp in the semi dark to eat home made nachos with avocado, cheese, tomatoes and refried beans. Our little van is not on the scale of our previous luxurious abodes, we have to move the table to sleep and it will take us some time to get ready for bed. It is now 9.15pm and I'm quite ready for it!

Sat 22nd
We awoke in the night with pouring rain, in fact we found that we hadn't closed one of the doors well and the rain was dripping in, no harm done though. In the morning there was more of the same all day, on and off heavy showers and at one point hail! We had to slow right down on the road because we could hardly see a thing and we thought that a window might break since the hail stones were quite big, like peas.
We started our day by driving to The Pinnacles, a national park in the desert just south of Cervantes, where large limestone pillars stick up out of the sand and have been weathered into all sorts of shapes. There are a couple of theories as to how they formed; they may be casts of ancient trees that were buried in the sand dunes, then they drew in water leaving crystalised salts around them; they have proof that this happened around ancient plant roots as they have found tiny pinnacles with the cast of the ancient root system inside, however they can't be certain that the inside of these large ones were trees - yet. The second theory is similar but does not involve tree roots but compression of sand and then some acids leaching in and forming limestone. Either way, or another, they were a strange sight in the middle of the desert. We drove amongst them as it was still raining and then left to head north. We drove up the coast through miles and miles of burnt bushland, there was a constant wind off the sea and the trees were all completely bent to the ground as evidence that the wind was not just a thing of today. We stopped in Geraldton and visited a large pet shop in the hope of buying a blacklight (UV light) to go hunting for scorpions - but no luck; and then continued on North to Gregory by the very salty Hutt Lagoon where miniature trees were growing in the salty pink waters, like bushland in Bonzai! It continued to rain on and off into the evening and night. The wind was blowing a gale, as sun set their were enormous numbers of swifts or swallows swooping around and then they all came to roost in an isolated little tree in the middle of our campsite. The tree made high pitched chirping sounds for about half an hour before they had all sorted out who's perch was whos; we could see them clinging to the branches as they thrashed about in the wind; I wonder why they didn't go into the great big barn just next door that had warm and cosy rafters to roost in?

Sun 23rd
More showers in the morning slowly faded out to leave a beautiful day. We drove up to Kalbarri, first stopping because there was a very stunned mouse in the road which Celso removed to the edge, then stopping to take pictures of the Bonzais in the Hutt Lagoon, and we also stopped because a poor stunned sheep that we assume had been hit/glanced by a car was blocking our side of the road; again Celso moved her to the edge and on we went. Our main morning stop was at Rainbow Valley, a private parrot collection. They had a fantastic aviary where we spent about an hour amongst the flying birds. Then we drove along into town and took a walk along the mouth of the Murchison River where there were gulls plummeting into the water to catch fish, cormorants diving and several pelicans lazing on the sandbanks. The wind was blowing off the sea again and there were more fine bent trees on the rocky bank of the river. We then drove out into the Kalbarri national park and stopped to photograph some amazing plants along the road. We visited a couple of lookouts over the gorge of the Murchison River further inland. Due to the rain of yesterday we were lucky enough to see the river quite full, yet still, it has been higher in the recent past as we can clearly see a high water mark in the vegetation. On our way out we stopped to watch an Echidna who again dug himself into the ground, we waited for about 15 minutes but he wouldn't come out so Celso pushed him out with a stick and he just sat in a tight little ball. Another 15 minutes passed and he had only slightly opened up so that we could see his front claws and his long nose but it was getting on in the afternoon and we had to go. You can't drive safely here between about 4:30pm and sunset because that is the time that kangaroos jump across the road and they really have not an inkling of the green cross code; we still had about 80km to go before we would reach a camping spot outside the National Park. However, we were lucky enough to also spot loads of birds, a kangaroo and some emus. We are now camped next to the Murchison river outside the National Park. It is a free camping spot with a couple of composting loos and a few rubbish bins and nothing else; no water or elec. The Murchison here is practically dry apart from a few pools here and there in the dry river bed, but there are some heron, egret and even a black swan making good use of the water.

Mon 24th
Leaving Tris to sleep (as usual - teenagers, who'd have them!) Celso and I went out for a wander up the river bed shortly after sunrise; we saw a flock of Corellas flying overhead, lots of footprint evidence of Emu and Kangaroo, some wading birds (probably sandpipers) in the occassional pools and large numbers of Procession Caterpillar Nests, they seem to love the Eucalypt trees. We drove north and then west out onto a peninsula to Denham (to do a little shopping) and then on just under 30km to Monkey Mia where bottlenose dolphins have been visiting the beach since the 60's. The water in the cove was dead calm, I didn't know the sea could be that calm; the temperature was in the mid 20's, the sand was pure white and it was nearly perfect...... but the water was freezing! We took a walk along the beach past a very patient pelican and found lots of tiny hermit crabs in the shallows. Then we returned to sit outside our van in the sun, drink tea and write a few postcards with emus wandering past and nosily poking their beaks into the van. A lazy afternoon was followed by early evening on the beach watching the sun go down over the water. As we watched a few dolphins made a brief appearance at the beach and a turtle floated lazily past - amazing.

Tues 25th.
Down at the beach by 7:15am, the dolphins appeared at around 7:30am; we all paddled into the water and they came in only about a foot away from us as we talked, clicked and whistled to them and they clicked in return. (Strictly no touching as they have discovered that dolphins are susceptable to human viruses such as the common cold.) It was a breathtaking experience to be so close to the adults and the little baby dolphins (are they called pups, calves?) splashed about with each other just a few metres further out. We then drove back to Denham to have a fry up breakfast at a little cafe and then we were on the road again, even further north to Coral Bay at the southern end of the Ningaloo Coral Reef. We were lucky enough to get a very close encounter with a huge wedge tailed eagle that was sitting in the low scrub at the edge of the road and posed for a few photos before soaring off into the sky.
We have driven over 1600km in the last 5 days! We spotted a few more of the magnificent wedge-tailed eagles, either sitting on trees or feasting on roadkill. There is an incredibly large number of dead kangaroos by the edge of the road, we think that maybe some are shot rather than them all being roadkill because some are far off the road, but who knows. Anyway the crows and the eagles (and I assume the dingos at quieter times) seem to be benefitting from the horror of it all. We also saw feral goats everywhere and then there are sheep and cattle sprinkled amongst the incredibly dry and sparsely vegetated (with really unappetising dry and spikey shrubs) landscape. We crossed some enormous and completely dry river beds and also areas of the road where there are signs warning of flood and waterlevel markers up to 2m.... I can't believe it could ever get that wet around here, and, as it is so flat you would have thought that the water would spread out really easily and therefore be very shallow. We stopped of at Carnarvon on route to take a break, it is so far from anywhere else but a thriving little community supporting 2 supermarkets and lots of tourist activities on the water. When we got to Coral Bay we went immediately to the dive shop to get kitted out for our trip tomorrow... but more of that tomorrow!

Wed 26th
We were at the dive shop at 8:15 and all on the boat and raring to go at 9:15. There were 19 passengers and 5 crew, 3 female swimmers / spotters and 2 guys who stayed on board, navigated and spotted from up top. Coral bay is on the southern end of the Ningaloo reef which stretches right up to Exmouth about 200km to the north. It is one of the few reefs where you can actually swim out to it from the beach but we zipped out in the boat and soon got our first wildlife sighting - a Dugong (a bit like the Manatees in the US), he/she was cruising along the bottom chewing on the sea grass; but it is a mammal and so it was just a matter of waiting before he/she came up to the surface for a breath - awesome. Then we spotted an eagle ray and a turtle before we finally anchored up on a part of the outer reef and kitted ourselves out to snorkel. Tris and I went out in tandem and were immediately pointing and talking (if you can call it that with a snorkel in your mouth) to try to get the other to see everything that we had. We saw amazingly coloured purple, green and black parrotfish, or yellow and green parrotfish, black and grey stripey pipefish with enourmously long snouts, huge giant clams, brain coral, huge mushroom like coral and green spikey coral. Loads of little fishies were flitting in and out of the corals, a white fluffy looking (Tristan insits that it was slimy) eel with glazed over eyes wriggled along the bottom; starfish and spikey urchins sat and munched (I assume) and some really large fish with fat lips were on patrol. We had swum from the boat against the current from the waves that crashed onto the outer part of the reef so when we were tired we mostly floated back to the boat. It was cold when we got out of the water, it was much warmer here than in New Zealand when we snorkeled off the North Island.
A shout went up from the captain, the final snorklers were signalled to return to the boat and then we up anchored to head northwards to where our spotter plane had made contact with our main quarry. On the 40min trip at top speed we were lucky enough to have several dolphins swim with us under the bow wave. They can go so fast, but one by one they dropped away until just one remained moving from side to side under the bow. After that we spotted a blue flying fish flying just a few cm above the water surface for about 30m, incredible.
We were divided into two groups for the 'main event', Tris, Celso and I were in the second group and watched as the first group were dropped into the water and then there was a very confusing thrashing of flippers and the spotters hand pointing this way and that. Then we were in the water and Tris and I tried to follow where the spotter pointed but we just got a face full of flippers from other swimmers and saw absolutely nothing. In fact about half our group saw nothing whilst three had been able to swim and enjoy the view for a full minute or so. Never mind, we were told that we would get another chance so we hauled ourselves out onto the boat and since everyone in group one had spotted the beast then our group was to go again first. The boat drove infront of the quarry, as directed by the spotter plane.... but then it dived out of sight.
We dawdled about for over an hour, went to take a look at a reef that stuck out of the water and lunch was put out... we thought our chance had gone and were going to console ourselves with food when the shout came out again, the food was taken in and we were off again. Into the water we went, Tris on my arm and we swam like hell in the direction our spotter pointed. Tris was getting water in his mask but I wasn't going to stop I just dragged him along beside me and then there it was... an 8m long whale shark, spotty, magnificent, incredible... we were a bit awestruck, and with the water in his mask Tristan was unable to keep up with him / her (probably a her because of the large size) as she was one of the fastest and largest whale sharks they had ever encountered. Normally they are about 6m and swim much slower. We returned to the boat and had just enough time to catch our breath before we were back in the water again. Jump in, masks into the water, watch the spotter's arm under the water... point, point, point she went and there out of the gloom came the whale shark straight towards us, mouth gaping, little fish fleeing before it. It doesn't matter that it is not a meat eater, it was pretty scarey and Tris and I scrambled to get out of its way, but the more left we swam the more left it turned. Celso was behind us and he also had to scramble to get out of its way. It went past us just over a metre away - just fantastic - it had a sucker fish (some kind of cleaner fish I think) stuck on his lateral fin, and others stuck under its belly. The tail was so powerful that we were swept away as it passed and again we were unable to follow. Back on the boat we exchanged our views exitedly and before we had even caught our breath it was time to go back in again. Tris opted out of this one, he was too pooped along with four others in our group, so it was just 5 of us and the spotter this time. More amazing views and Celso swimming far to fast and too close to the tail got himself completely exhausted and had to have a hand from the spotter. I managed to follow for about 30sec at full pelt until I caught up with someone else and got a face full of flipper that made me pull up sharpish. What an adrenaline rush, just fantastic. Of course you won't get to see any of the photos because we were given them on a disk from the other diver who was taking loads of underwater shots.. you just have to believe me how amazing it was. We will publish these and other shots we have on disk from quadbiking and Celso's superman flight over the Murchison river at a later date.
We had now gone over 2 hours away from Coral bay and had to start the journey back. I think everyone was too pooped to have done another swim anyway. We were all very satisfied with a great day, and so lucky as this was the first sighting since last Saturday. We all ate our lunches pretty much in silence mulling over what we had seen - what a privelege. As we neared Coral Bay we had more fantastic views of the reef and some fish as the tide was now out and the coral was so near to the surface, a fab ending to a fabulous day. Next showers, a dinner up at the hotel and bed to sleep and dream of big, gaping mouthed fish.