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I let Mike drive today; I know he was just itching to. We arrived at El Questro, which is a million acre farm, with lots of gorges and stuff. Dory had to tackle another river crossing, which she complained about by making rattling noises.

It was a pleasant place to camp, right beside the Pentecost River, but it wasn’t cheap. It cost $30 to camp and another $30 to use their roads and do their walks. A rip-off but we got over it.

Our camp by the river:

Here’s a photo of the funny looking cows they have here:

And a photo of funny looking trees (Boabs)

We had dinner in the steak house as we were out of fresh food.

We were up early for the drive into the Bungle Bungle ranges. It was my turn to drive (as I like the off-roady bits).

Most of the road was recently graded so it was a pretty easy drive. We did the 53 kms in 2 hours 15 minutes. John, I think the road was in much better condition that when you did it! There were numerous water crossings however, and Dory showed her disgust by losing her number plate in one of them.

Dory has also taken up butterfly collecting. When Mike opened her bonnet today, it was full of pretty butterflies – all dead!

In the morning we did the cathedral gorge and domes walk. There were crisp reflections in the water.

We saw another Death Adder. They are starting to make me nervous and I am now wearing my gaiters on our walks. We also saw an eagle with a snake in its mouth.

In the afternoon we drove over the other side of the park and saw the Echidna chasm. We camped the night in the Kurrajong campground and it was very peaceful, just the quiet hum of generators from the adjacent camping ground.

We saw our first crocodile today as we walked along the Fitzroy Rivers edge at the Geikie Gorge. He was sunning himself on a rock. Both Mike and I can cross “crocodiles” off our “to see” lists.

We must, however, remember to do walks earlier in the morning. By 10am it was in the mid-30s and damn hot!

The rest of the day was spent driving. We found a free camp spot for the night just before the turn off to the Bungle Bungles.

Boring driving day. We stopped at Derby for some supplies but there wasn’t much here. We were going to go to the Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek NP, but the road was horribly rutted and we couldn’t be bothered with the 200km detour.

We camped at the Fitzroy river lodge at Fitzroy Crossing. Nice spot. We had crumbed chicken and spuds for tea.

After the excitement of sharks and whale sharks we found Broome a bit boring. We stayed at the Cable Beach caravan park, which had a nice pool, but it was very noisy. Cable Beach is nice, but no decent snorkelling and not much else to do. We read a few books and stayed 3 days, basically because we were too lazy to pack up and move on.

We did the nightly ritual of watching the sunset over the Indian Ocean, and had a couple of dinners in the restaurant overlooking the ocean. Sounds like it might have been the same one John and Marlene ate in, but they have employed foreigners now, so the service is good.

We have been watching the sunsets over the Indian Ocean for a few weeks now and we have an acronym – NABS – (Not Another Bloody Sunset).

We have been in Broome the last few days. Its pretty boring here with not much to do, so we basically chilled out by the pool or beach reading our books and watching the sunset over the indian ocean. Mike needs to catch up on some reading so we can do some book swaps. I’ve read about 7 to his 1. Its a bit hard to read while driving I guess.

We are moving on today.

Here is our route so far. You need to join the gaps where the GPS failed.

Swimming with whale sharks has been on my to-do list for many years now, and this is one more thing I can now cross off.

It was a full day out at sea and while we were waiting for our spotter plane to spot some whale sharks, we had a few swims along the way. A few of us jumped in to swim with Tuna that were feeding on the surface. This was all well and good until someone yelled “Shark” and I looked down and there was a bloody great big shark. I freaked out and decided to head back to the boat but there was another bloody great big shark in my way. I looked around me and there were about 5 or 6 bloody great sharks circling below us. And these weren’t tiny reef sharks; they were really big real things, more than twice the size of me.

The boat was about 300 metres away, and I was scared to break away from the other snorkellers (who by the way, seemed to think seeing sharks was cool) but I really didn’t like having these horrid things swimming below me. They reckon they are just inquisitive, but I reckon they were eyeing us up for a feeding frenzy. I decided to make the break and swam as fast as I could back to the boat, with my eyes shut so I wouldn’t have to look at them. Luckily Mike was safely on board, saving his energy for the swim with whale sharks.

About 1pm, just as we were eating lunch, we got the call that a whale shark had been spotted. How it works is the boat gets in front of the whale shark. A spotter jumps in the water. When they say, “GO”, 10 swimmers jump in the water at the same time and swim like crazy toward the spotter. Then when you are wondering where the whale shark is, it comes gently cruising past you, about 1 metre away. It’s really cool. The whale shark was a fairly small one, only 3.5 metres, but was awesome all the same. We got to jump in as many times as we liked for up to 1 hour. It was hard work though trying to keep up with it.

The photos aren’t really the best, but it is hard trying to enjoy the shark and take photos at the same time.

This is one of its head:

We found an even better place than Coral Bay and that is in the Cape Range national park, just south of Exmouth on the Indian ocean side. There are camping sites right on the beach, and the snorkelling is amazing. It is even better than Coral Bay and way less touristy. Most campsites only allow 7 campers. The coral was also more colourful and the fish more colourful. I saw a large shovelnosed ray, which was pretty cool.

We went for a walk at the Yardie creek gorge and saw two snakes. One was a death Adder (according to this guy in Army uniform), and we weren’t sure what the other one was. Mike can now cross “snakes” off his “to-see” list.

We spent two days here, just snorkelling and enjoying the weather.

We arrived in Coral bay around 3pm. The caravan park was really busy but we somehow managed to get a beachfront site in the caravan park. This was the view from our camp.

The snorkelling was fantastic. It is so cool having access to the Nigaloo reef from the shore.

Visibility is high and there is loads of coral and fish. As I was fiddling with my underwater camera I looked up and was face to face with a giant snapper. They were funny and seemed as amused by us as we were by them. They were very friendly and it makes me feel sad that we catch them, murder them, and then eat them.

There were colourful fish of all shapes and sizes. I saw a sea snake. We saw a black fish with whiskers (catfish maybe?). There were loads of stingrays on the sandy bits but I wasn’t so sure about them.

We spent two days in Coral Bay, enjoying the heat, the snorkelling and having the sea at our doorstep.

Just a quick update to say we’re going swimming with whale sharks tomorrow. Hope i don’t get seasick!