Visiting the underwater world of Ningaloo Reef

As interesting as our visit to Tom Price was, we’re always a little more at home when we’re near the coast, so I think we were all quite happy to roll into Exmouth. It was also the first time in a while that we’d stayed in a town of any size (and in a caravan park for that matter), so it was a bit of a novelty to be around other people and have access to things like showers, toilets and a camp kitchen.  There was even a pool!

The kids always like to scope things out as soon as we arrive somewhere, and they quickly worked out that the kitchen had ovens. That opens up a whole new culinary world for us, and promised a few days branching out from whatever we can cook on a two-burner stove (Pies! A roast! The opportunities were endless…).

Exmouth is quite a small town, and is clearly all about the reef, the whales and whale sharks. I’d prepared ahead for the reef, visiting Kmart back in Broome to sort out some snorkelling gear for us all. All we needed now was a dog sitter, so we could pop off to spend time on the reef together. As usual, that required about a thousand phone calls, but eventually we locked in a couple of days with the vet’s receptionist’s flatmate, who conveniently lived just around the corner. She had a little dog called Didge, and Jett and Didge ran each other ragged for two days straight while we went back and forth to the reef.

There’s a lot of hype around Ningaloo Reef and all I can say is that it is well-deserved. It’s pretty fantastic to be able to walk out from a beach and be snorkelling among such a wide variety of fish. The coral isn’t particularly colourful, but sadly these days that’s a common theme with reefs around the world as the sea temperature heats up.  The water was a tad cold, but that was ok as we could pop out for a quick look around, return to the beach to warm up, then have another go.

On the first day, on recommendation from the information centre, we went to Lakeside. In my opinion, this was the best of the snorkelling. At times we were standing in knee-deep water and had huge dart, bream and threadfin salmon swimming around us. Both Jim and I were watching them and rating their tastiness (if only you could fish in a protected marine sanctuary…). The kids have been snorkelling once before (on the Great Barrier Reef) but being a bit bigger, they were a bit more comfortable going further out and having a good look around.

On the second day we went to Turquoise Bay. This bay is absolutely stunning and the snorkelling was very good. The kids busied themselves burying their father in the sand. He obliged by falling asleep in his little “sand bed”. We did get the odd strange look at the human-shaped sand sculpture, adorned with just a hat.

It wasn’t all snorkelling though. We also did a couple of walks through the gorges (we should add up the number of gorge walks we’ve done!). The walk along Yardie Creek and up that gorge was quite nice, and then another time we did the Mandu Mandu Gorge walk which was a bit more challenging (and it was ridiculously windy too). On another day just Heidi and I did a walk on the eastern side of the peninsula out to Shothole Canyon. It was about a 7km walk – not the most interesting walk we’ve done, although the canyon itself was quite impressive.

We also enjoyed what Exmouth had to offer. Heidi had snuck a lunch invitation into my book, so when I discovered that, we went off for a girls’ lunch at the local sushi place. We also tried to go to Whalebone Brewery after quite a few people had recommended it. However despite their claims of dog-friendliness, it turns out they weren’t that dog friendly after all. So we went to Froth Brewery instead which was dog and kid friendly and had some interesting beers to try too.

We did try our luck fishing in the area and were surprised at how it wasn’t that great. Of course we were limited in where we could go (dog friendly beaches, non-marine park beaches), and when we could go (when we could fit it in around work, school and other things basically). It was nice to stand and fish in water that wasn’t too cold though (the water on the eastern side of the peninsula is significantly warmer than that over on the reef (western side).

We extended our stay in Exmouth by a night, just to make sure we had time to do all the things we needed to do, and so I could smash out a big project for work that I needed to get off my plate. Then it was time to move on however, 2.5 hours down the road to a beach-side camp within Waroora Station called Lagoon.

We drove there via Coral Bay where the snorkelling was even closer to the shore (about 2 metres off it, in some parts). The town seems to consist of the caravan parks and a couple of shops and was teeming with tourists. We had considered staying there but opted not to and I think that was a good decision as the beach there isn’t dog friendly. But we spent a nice couple of hours there in the park next to the beach taking turns to snorkel and watch the dog.

The Lagoon campsite is up a 30-odd km “driveway” on the station, first on dirt, then on sand. We made it through all that though and found ourselves in some sort of paradise, camped behind a dune just metres from a spectacular beach. With just a quick look I could tell there were going to be fish aplenty, and it took seconds to see the whales swimming out to sea too.

We set up as quickly as we could then started the fishing, catching a few things (dart, flathead, flounder, threadfin salmon).

Since we’ve arrived here it’s been a routine of fishing, working, relaxing, fishing…We only booked three nights here, which isn’t enough, but it will have to do as we’ve got a booking to get to in Carnarvon. The best thing is that the kids have got interested in fishing again – I think it helps when they throw a line in, immediately get bites, then catch fish, and all by themselves too.

The only drawback about this place is the crabs. Once the sun goes down, out come the crabs. They’re about 10cm wide and there are THOUSANDS of them. Apparently they are more scared of us than we are of them (although I beg to differ). They “clickety clack” all over the place, for most of the night, but luckily haven’t worked out how to open the tent zips yet. Jim has popped out in the night a couple of times and says it’s like interrupting a bunch of teenagers at a party. They all just stop and look at him then scuttle in every direction. I’ll take his word for it as I feel no need to get amongst them all.

Anyway, I better wrap this up so I can finish my day’s work and get back to that fishing again…