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Hi everyone. I have just made it back to Perth after my long outing up the coast to Coral Bay. It was a crazy 36-hour return trip but well worth it, and hey, it wasn't really that far for Australia - this country is enormous!
I started out at 5:30am on Wednesday, catching a bus and two trains to pick up the Greyhound in East Perth. It was a long, long ride and the coach made frustratingly slow progress, but the scenery and road itself was fascinating. We quickly got out into the dry, arid outback, with nothing for miles and miles except red soils, scrubland, the odd Roadtrain, roadkill (mainly roo) and some remote cattle stations. We stopped at several Roadhouses on route - small rundown petrol stations made from tin and wood, with a shop selling confectionary, bizarre souvenirs, sarongs and postcards so curled and faded from the sun that they were barely readable. There was always a cafe too, with exactly the same greasy fry-up at each - an all-day breakfast, chicken (tasty or spicy), battered fish, chips and meat pies, mmm... There were stalls to sit at indoors just like an American diner, complete with huge moths, monster cockroaches and spiders on the walls. It was nice and warm inside though so I ate my Uncle Toby's Oats with my coach companions. They were a queer mix - mostly random people with big suitcases, lots of license-less men, a few backpackers, a family relocating, and quite a few Aboriginal people. On the route back, loads hopped on at 4am munching beef jerky (or kangaroo?). My companion chewed it all the way through to Perth!
The return trip was just as long - I hopped on at 1am in Coral Bay yesterday and got back to Perth at 5:30pm! The journey was a real experience though and I'm glad to have seen the Outback - I got a real sense for the vast nothingness of Australia, the sheer distances between stops, the dry, dusty wilderness and the small hopeless places strung along the road.
Up in Coral Bay I had a super three days. The town was tiny, with a desert on one side and the sea on the other with the Ningaloo Reef just offshore. Because of the hot salty bore water, it was little more than a couple of small supermarkets, caravan parks, a few cafes and bars, tourist centres and a really good backpackers. There was a chilled-out, holiday vibe, and the weather was great - freezing by night but hot and sunny by day - yippee! The beach was beautiful and backed by enormous white sand dunes which I explored many times. And the snorkelling was awesome! The reef was only about 200m offshore so I snorkelled off the beach and walked around a headland to pick up a current that carried me back around to the main beach. There were lots of fish and colourful corals - wow! I decided to go out on a snorkelling trip on Friday too, mainly with the hope of seeing Manta rays. The boat went out to the outer reef from where we did four dives. The first was at a shark teeth-cleaning station, where small fish obediently swim into the mouths of small sharks and clean their teeth - crazy but true! We saw an amazing variety of fish and hard and small coral on the remaining dives, as well as turtles, and on the third - manta rays! A spotter plane had located two so we whizzed to reach them and then leapt off the boat nearby. We swam above them for about 15 minutes. They were breath-taking - one was 7m long. Mantas can swim up to 50 km/h but were just about going slow enough for us to keep up at top speed. They flap wing-like fins to swim along - it was an incredible sight. We were also lucky to run by some enormous humpback whales which breached right by the boat - wow! The spotter place was also keeping an eye on tiger sharks that were in the area - I was pretty freaked out by this so didn't drift far from the boat! So it was a super trip topped off by another awesome west coast sunset.
I can't believe my time in Australia is nearly over, and WA too. I will explore Perth city over the next few days and do some frantic swotting on Hong Kong and China before I fly out on Thursday night. I must pick up a Rough Guide first, and learn some Mandarin - bangmang (help!)
Grace xx
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