Exmouth

We finally dragged ourselves off the beach at Ningaloo Station and headed to Exmouth for some much needed supplies. Once the shopping was done we spent our days on more gorgeous beaches and some pretty amazing snorkelling in Cape Range National Park. After being very nervous about sharks before Coral Bay, Lola is now an old hand at swimming with reef sharks and barely flinched when we ran into two big ones at Turquoise Bay.

Ningaloo Station

After Coral Bay we spent seven glorious days in paradise. Ningaloo Station is 40kms north of Coral Bay, the road in was dry, dusty and corrugated but well worth it! We camped right on the beach and were surrounded by aqua blue, crystal clear water and white sand. Whales breached just past the reef and dolphins swam along the sandbar daily, one afternoon we watched a baby dolphin practice somersaults in front of our camp. We explored an old whaling station after tackling the sand dunes and getting water from the wells. We met some lovely people while we were there and were a bit sad to have to move on.

Coral Bay

Tim and I went to Coral Bay on our honeymoon and were really looking forward to spending five days in paradise... we weren't disappointed. The weather was warm, the water was crystal clear and the snorkelling was fantastic! We did a snorkelling trip on the reef which was a lot of fun. We were very lucky to see some reef sharks, huge green turtles, lots of beautiful fish and coral and even an octopus. Lola made some friends while we were there and hopefully we will catch up with them in Port Hedland.

Stromatolites

We stopped and looked at the stromatolites on our way out of Shark Bay and the kids were so pumped to see one of the first living organisms that appeared on the planet. I think they were a little disappointed that they didn't do that much. Our next stop was a beautiful beach camp a bit further north called Gladstone. We had a pretty amazing start and end to the day, the morning was so earily still with an almost undistinguishable horizon and another gorgeous West Australian sunset.

Shark Bay

We based ourselves in the Francois Peron National Park for four days while we checked out Monkey Mia, the National Park and the rest of Shark Bay. The beaches in the National Park were beautiful and we all loved shark spotting at Skip Jack Point. Shell Beach was just superb and we never get tired of looking at that blue water. We saw dolphins, sharks, rays, turtles and a thorny devil and lots of amazing sunsets.

Storming Australia

We knew we had seen a sand trooper walking along the highway previously and just couldn't place where. We think it must have been Tassie, so you can imaging our surprise to see him again, just south of the Shark Bay turn off. This time curiosity got the better of us so we stopped to say hello. His name is Scotty and he is walking around Australia dressed as a sand trooper for Monash Children's Hospital. It was a hot day, there were heaps of flies and he was fully dressed as a sand trooper! What an amazing thing to do, you can check out his facebook page here.

Kalbarri

Tim finally came back from Alice and we got the hell out of Geraldton! We spent a glorious six days in Kalbarri enjoying the weather, the beautiful Murchison River and its gorges and the wonderful coastline. Tim loved kayaking up the river and caught a few nice bream for dinner.