Local novelist Sara Foster continues her journey from Perth through Monkey Mia, and onto Coral Bay and Exmouth. Manta rays? Check. Sharks? Check!
Coral Bay is a tiny town with a huge appeal: a place of glorious sunsets and opportunities to experience the extensive marine life of the Ningaloo Reef. The town lies a few hours’ drive north of Monkey Mia on the North West Coastal Highway, and 140 km south of Exmouth, where the nearest airport and car/camper rentals are located (see www.discoverwest.com.au for more details).
Ningaloo Reef is still somewhat lesser known but no less spectacular than the Great Barrier Reef. Here you can swim with manta rays all year round, or go whale watching from June to October to see the magnificent humpback whales on their annual migration. There are diving trips available from town and a plethora of marine life to see, while the protected lagoon in town is a great spot for beginners to give snorkelling a go. The area is a haven for loggerhead and hawkesbeak turtles.
Further north, Exmouth has accommodation ranging from caravan parks to the new Novotel, which might be your chance to catch up on a bit of luxury if you’ve missed it so far. Again, look to eat early as it’s a quiet place where most places seem to close down soon after sunset, though there are a couple of taverns. The drive from the town into Cape Range National Park is the Australian landscape at its superb best, with the outback on one side of you and glorious beaches on the other. Take the opportunity to snorkel at one of the popular sites, such as Lakeside or Turquoise Bay, which are exceptional spots with rays aplenty in the shallows (wear something on your feet when paddling to avoid a painful encounter). You may well find yourself swimming alongside a turtle or two. Take rashie tops or wetsuits if you can, as despite the largely consistent summery weather, the water is always relatively cool.
At either Coral Bay, or, more popularly, Exmouth, you can go on a ‘whale shark tour’ between April and July, to swim with the biggest fish in the sea. The whale sharks come to the surface to feed after the annual coral spawning, and this gentle giant of the deep is a truly awesome sight to behold – a creature that may look highly intimidating but is quite harmless, guzzling only on plankton. If you go for this, as I highly recommend you do, your biggest challenge will be keeping up with them once you’ve entered the water, as they’re deceptively fast. The tour operators are very proficient at getting everyone in and out of the water quickly, and then will use horsepower to catch up with these marine mammoths so you can jump straight in again! There are a number of very professional operators out of Exmouth (go to www.exmouthwa.com.au for details of these as well as more general information about the town), and if you’re able to take a photo of any whale sharks you swim with, you can log on and upload your pictures to www.whalesharkproject.org, which uses the white spots on the sharks’ sides near their fins to identify each shark. From this they can add you to their invaluable database, allowing you to see any past and future sightings of ‘your’ whale shark. This site is also a great starting point to learn about these sharks and their sister species, as there are many problems endangering them right now which could prove disastrous for their survival and the overall health of the marine environment in the near future, so everyone’s help and support is vital.
Exmouth has a small airport from where you can get back to Perth if you choose to end your journey here. Otherwise, there’s plenty more adventures awaiting you further up the coast, to Broome and beyond!
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