Onwards to Exmouth, Turquoise Bay and Whale Sharks on the Ningaloo Reef

With only 150 odd kms to Exmouth we had a relaxed start to the day. Exmouth sits out on a peninsula away from the mainland – a bit off the beaten path. It used to be home to an American naval base which was decommissioned after a cyclone hit the area a few years back. Now all that remains are empty hangars, barracks, barbed-wire fences and a sonar station which sits on the point. We hit a ‘wild’ fish company on the edge of town and picked up some massive tiger prawns and Golden ….(something or other that I unfortunately can’t recall) – it was beautiful whatever it was – even Aidan – the self-proclaimed fish-hater asked for seconds! On entering the town it looks like it has hit a boom of money as huge developments along the foreshore are being built with a man-made canal system to give all the properties a waterfront/access point. Only a handful of homes have been built as yet, but those that have look fairly impressive. They’ve even built a pedestrian bridge to cross the widest part and as it looks now there aren’t too many pedestrians to make the jaunt. Our caravan park sits in the middle of town and the woman we had to check in with was a couple sparks short of dimwit and couldn’t seem to get the idea that Jen’s parents and ourselves wished to have sites beside each other and where she had placed us was actually about a block apart. Given her lack of grey matter we put ours together and simply parked our truck in the site given to Jen’s parents and snuck their van onto our site adjacent our caravan. Worked great and there were no questions asked – even when the owner did his morning rounds to check his sites - like a warden ensuring all his prisoners were behaving themselves. Not sure why he did this as the only way in or out was blocked by a card-controlled cable gate – you could only get in with the card you had to pay a deposit of $20 on when you arrived. We’d arrived around noon and were keen to see some sights so headed out towards Turquoise Bay (another place mentioned in ‘Are We There Yet? that was essential to our itinerary). As per usual we were acutely aware of our fuel status and 15 kms along the road in discovered we had only 61 kms in the tank for what would be at least a 72km trip. Back into town we went to fill up. At the servo I failed to pay attention to the pump number and told the cashier the wrong number for which she quickly processed and had me sign away my life only to realize it was about a third of what we owed. Fortunately the representative of the van for which we’d paid the fuel was just on her way in and coughed up some cold, hard cash for me while we sorted the actual amount I owed on the visa. Our experience of Exmouth hadn’t started off with a bang but things happen in threes right and we’d had all three happen at once so only good luck could prevail now!

Turquoise Bay sits a few kilometres inside Cape Range National Park and offers either a drift or bay side for snorkeling. We chose the drift side – had a nice sound to it and the image of floating along gazing at coral and fishes was somewhat appealing – they didn’t mention on the road signs that the reason you drift is that the water is being pulled towards a channel and if you get past a certain point are likely to be sucked out to sea. Never mind – lots of others were in the same predicament so if we did get sucked out hopefully someone would notice and send a boat to come looking. It was beautiful though and the boys were stoked with all the fish and less blighted coral than what we’d saw back in Coral Bay. We’d booked ourselves onto a Whale Shark Charter in the morning so headed back to camp to finish our set up, get through some school work and organize ourselves for the big day. The Charter Company collected us outside the caravan park with a few other couples – one fellow with an ocean décor sort of gentleman’s hat with a small brim. It seemed a propos for the day but he didn’t seem to respond when I asked him if it was his lucky hat for seeing whale sharks. I needed some luck as up to now I’d struck out on great whites at Port Lincoln and dugongs and sea turtles back at Monkey Mia – today was going to be the day the jinx ended! I’d dosed up on my favourite anti-emetic and was ready for a stellar boat ride. The main ‘dive master’ was a young’un from Bradford, Ontario – nare a hop, skip and jump from Barrie where Jen and her parents are from – things were looking up. Once on the boat we did a short trip to the local coral and hopped in for a quick snorkel – we needed to buy some time before the spotter planes were up and ready to find us some big beasties with which to swim. After a couple of hours of powering up the coastline we eventually found our first whale shark – I nearly wet myself with glee – the curse was broken! I had Piper for the first dive which made things a tad difficult but once I was able to get her snorkel correctly in her mouth, she did quite well and did get a pretty good look at this massive beast gracefully cruising through the water just under the surface. As other companies were in the area we had to pop out and let everyone have their turn. In fairly quick succession we found 2 others and got to see them from all angles and do some fairly decent swims along side them accidentally getting within a couple meters (when we were only to be within about 3 – 4 meters for safety). For both the second and third dive the shark was actually coming directly at us with its mouth wide open collecting plankton – it was nerve-racking and spectacular all at the same time. Before our fourth and final dive we did some more drift snorkeling along the outer aspect of the reef and managed to spot a black tipped reef shark, a loggerhead turtle (Jen and Aidan), a massive Groper and schools upon schools of brightly coloured fish – simply amazing! On the way back to port we sat up at the front of the boat with the kids and caught sea-spray on our feet with any large swell. The heat up here is sweltering and we’d feel gusts of hot air blast us as if we were in a rotisserie oven as we ambled up the coastline. At one point we ran into a flotilla (not sure of the correct terminology here) of yellow, black and white butterflies and then glimpsed a school of flying fish do their little aerial dance before plopping back into the sea. It seemed like a never-ending roller-coaster of events/sightings and once back on terra firma were somewhat spent from the day’s festivities. Alas it was the last night we were to spend with Jen’s parents so we hit the Novotel in town for some fine wine and dinner. Aside from the despicable service and a waitress who a) couldn’t speak enough English to make the specials understandable, b) was unsure of the colour of Sauv Blanc and c) seemed to think we weren’t parched or starving for a good feed and wanted something NOW, the evening was actually quite nice and food delectable. It would be a sad farewell the next day as the past two weeks of ramblings were literally unforgettable and we were all amazed at how quickly they had sped by.