One of the big goals of this trip was to be at Ningaloo Reef at the same time as the Whale sharks. At Coral Bay we went swimming with them (you really have to swim hard to keep up!). It's not exactly a chance encounter since the sharks are spotted by airplane. Once the boat is in front of the shark, a group of people jump into the ocean and watch it cruise past. You are allowed to follow it for up to ten minutes. We even had our very own photographer! Check out the difference in quality of the photographs - his lens was the size of a dinner plate!
The trip lasted all day and after swimming with the Whale sharks for an hour we had time to do some snorkeling on the reef. A large stingray below.
Exmouth had an extraordinary amount of rain three weeks before we got there. Everything was green! Unfortunately, the visitor centre and several camp sites in Cape Range National Park got washed away.
Charles Knife Canyon below ....
... and Yardie Creek, which has a small population of Black-footed Rock Wallabies. They can only be viewed from the other side of the creek, so my zoom was not quite powerful enough.
Our favourite spot was called "Oyster Stacks", which is a marine reserve. There were so many tropical fish and they came very close!
Exmouth was established in 1967 to support the nearby US Naval Communication Station comprising of 13 transmission towers. The highest one is 389m high - that's higher than the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building! On Google Earth they can be clearly seen (or the tracks between them).
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