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Happy Hippos on Holiday
Hi everyone!
And so our West Coast adventure continues...part two begins just north of the Tropic of Capricorn in Coral Bay at the southern end of the Ningaloo Reef. The reef is amazingly accessible, lying only 100m offshore compared to a minimum of 30km for the East Coast's Great Barrier Reef. To allow us to see the reef at its best, we went on a glass-bottomed boat trip that stopped at several snorkelling sites. Swimming amongst hundreds of fish as they were being fed from the back of the boat was a memorable experience though the definite highlight was coming across a turtle and snorkelling alongside it for 15 minutes.
The next day we continued on our way to Exmouth at the northern tip of the Ningaloo Reef. We felt very lucky with our accommodation once again, having an entire cararvan to ourselves, where we quickly made ourselves at home. Over the next couple of days we explored the surrounding area including more of the Ningaloo Reef as well as Cape Range National Park. Due to choppy seas, the snorkelling on the reef wasn't up the amazing standard of that at Coral Bay, but was fun nevertheless. We did, however, see some fantastic scenery while scaling the rocks around Yardie and Mandu Mandu creeks.
We awoke to the sound of pattering rain on the caravan, a fact that didn't concern us too much, as all we had ahead of us was a full day's driving inland to the mining town of Tom Price. That morning, we came across one of the locals at a watering hole on the campsite...in the form of an emu drinking from the freshly created puddles by our car. We were pleased to see he was not accompanied by Rod Hull, but made a swift escape in case either he or Grotbags were lurking around the corner!
Our lack of concern at the rain was a bit of an oversight, as several hours into the drive we were forced to stop. Hyacynth expressed grave concern at driving through the severe flooding (see photo), as she had not yet learned to swim - this added another 300km onto our trip!
Eventually we arrived at Tom Price and secured our place on a trip into Karijini National Park the following day. The tour was well worth it as Dave, our experienced guide, took us across some challenging terrain to several "gorge-eous" gorges while we enjoyed the company of other travellers. Our first challenge was the climb down through Weano Gorge to Handrail Pool, a beautiful pool, which as the name suggests is only accessible down a sheer rock face with the aid of a handrail and rope. We continued on for our picnic lunch at Oxers Lookout at the junction of the Red, Weano, Joffre and Hancock Gorges - one of Australia's great sights, and truly spectacular! We walked off our lunch with a pleasant hike though Dales Gorge, past Fortescue Falls (the only permanent falls in Karijini) and onto Fern Pool, where we were rewarded with a cooling swim. Our guide was quick to silence our screams as we entered the freezing water, as the site was sacred to Aboriginals and he didn't want us to awaken the Rainbow Serpent!
On the way back, we drove past Mount Bruce (at 1235m, the 2nd highest in WA) and Dave convinced us that Bruce would be a good mount for a couple of Sheilas like us...to climb the following day! It is a difficult climb at the best of times, but the fact that we didn't start it until 11am probably didn't help our plight, as there was very little shade to protect us from the harsh outback midday sun. The views from the top were well worth it, however, and we took great delight in adding our names to the little black book of Bruce's conquests disguised as a Visitor's Book kept on the summit!
That evening we were further delighted by the generosity of a local restaurateur, who invited us to enjoy an all-you-can-eat buffet on the house on hearing tales of our trip so far. Totally stuffed from our enormous dinner, we returned to our campsite, where we bumped into another local at a watering hole, this time in the form of a wallaby hanging around outside the shower block...most amusing!
There was just time the next morning for one final walk/swim combination before we headed off on an arduous 1000km drive over the following 24 hours, taking us to our destination of Broome.
Broome is a sleepy seaside town on the shores of the azure Indian Ocean and we spent most of our time here enjoying the laid back atmosphere down at Cable Beach. We recharged our batteries with sun, sea, sand...and wine. We also witnessed some amazing sunsets, these ones unique in that they had camel trains parading along the beach in the foreground...ahhhhh!
Relaxed and recouperated we prepared ourselves for our action packed Kimberley tour which would take us onto Darwin.
More about this in our next postcard.
Hope you are all well!
Love,
Zena and Kirstie
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