Australia: Perth, Exmouth, Coral Bay, Fremantle
This long trip starts with a very long flight from Oslo, through Frankfurt, Singapore, and at last to Perth. In Singapore we had some waiting time so we stepped out into the garden with lot's of sunflowers and humid warm air (oh ya jet fumes) for some relief before we head off for for the west of Australia, Perth. It was great to finally get there, so we made our way from the airport to Governor Robinson, a type of higher end backpacker's place with wooden floors and our own room, here we could make our own food or take a short walk to the nearest eatery. We spent a couple of days in Perth going to the beach (where I got sunburned on my ankles, silly boy!), shopping and recovering from the long journey.
After a brief stay in Perth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth,_Western_Australia) we flew north over the rugged west coast. Once we left the city limits of Perth we only saw the beautiful wild and unforgiving country side which stretched for miles. We saw many small towns and wondered how they survived, we also saw the beautiful western coast line that went on for miles with it's fantastic colours. After a short stop we soon landed at Exmouth, it was hot, really hot so we all got into a van for a 20 minute ride into town. We later found out that Exmouth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exmouth,_Western_Australia is one of the sunniest places on the planet and thus has a solar observatory located near by. We arrived at the motel and found out that it was too hot to go out, so we only took a short walk to the dive shop to arrange for our diving the next day. In the evening, when it cooled down a bit we went for a walk and soon met the wild life (no not the locals they do not walk around a lot like crazy tourists), as walked we met Emus, kangaroos and other strange things (we did find the locals they were in the pub like sensible people).
We started diving the next day and on the boat ride out we were met by dolphins and turtles as we sailed out to the dive site, Exmouth bay is beautiful bay with small sandy islands (where turtles lay their eggs), blue and green water (some areas are very shallow) and gentle breezes to take some of the heat off. We dived with Exmouth dive centre and with our always cheerful and helpful captain, we visited the following sites: Gullivers, Blizzard Ridge (Note: when they say wall dive it's not a traditional wall that goes down 30, 40 meters plus it's more like a rocky ridge), Cod spot, Fraggle Rock, the Labyrinth, The Spit, Maze and Navy Pier.
Navy Pier was one of the most fantastic and creature rich dive I have been on, you need a permit to dive there as it is a active navy refueling station, you dive off the end of the pier and the magic begins. You are met by school of snappers, travelly, and barracuda and then at 13 meters you find the bottom and the fun begins; white tip sharks, wobbegong sharks, moray eels, crocodile fish, octopus, toad frogfish and loads of nudibranch and flatworms. The visibility was great and it took a lot of time to look around as there is lot's of old building material laying around and serves as good camouflage and protection. We really wanted and had planned to do this dive again but to our embarrassment we had forgotten about the tides and had missed the dive and sadly the next day we would be leaving. We did try the swimming pool once but soon found out that it was like swimming in a hot tub, but the locals liked it.
One day we decided to have a better look around and find out a bit more about the area so we took a tour which brought us up the cape range to see the lay of the land and find out what lives there. The Cape Range National Park http://www.exmouthwa.com.au/pages/cape-range-national-park covers a large area of land near Exmouth along the western side of the North West Cape. Cape Range is a massive limestone range that has been eroded of time. Cape Range National Park is beautiful with spectacular deep gorges, ridges, gullies and extensive caves. We travelled along the Charles Knife Road exploring the Thomas Carter Lookout with it's magnificent views of the deep gorges, across rolling plains and out to the splendid blue green waters of the Gulf of Exmouth beyond. While driving around there were such things as bustards, kangaroos, wallabies, emus, lizards, wild goats and besides the animals there were large termite mound all around. On the Coral Bay side, at the end of the road around the cape is Yardie Creek. A lagoon filled by very high tides that cross the sand bar at its mouth, the gorge of Yardie Creek. We travelled by boat to the end to see if we could see any black-footed rock wallabies or other birds or animals that are around. Yardie Creek is a beautiful and very peaceful place where you could spend hours listening to the wind and the sounds of nature. The trip was very interesting and we met some nice people, with our last stop at the lighthouse at the tip of the cape we headed back to Exmouth.
We took a 2 hour bus ride to the other side of the cape to a small place called Coral Bay, with blue blue water, large sand dunes, a lot cooler that Exmouth. The reason for it being as much ten degrees cooler on the Coral Bay side is a ridge on the centre of the cape that somehow keeps the weather cooler on one side while the other stays very hot. We stayed at a upscale backpacker's place that had nice rooms and a pool and it was close to a restaurant, a dive shop and the beach (Basicially what we need). When not diving we spent time on the beach, climbed the sand dunes, took walks along the shore and watched the baby black tip sharks (sometimes up to 15 of them). The diving was OK but we could not go to a lot of the best sites due to strong winds and that the larger boat was being serviced, which left us with a small rubber boat. Here we dived; The Canyon, Big Blue, Lottie's Lagoon, and Black Douglas Rock. The diving was interesting but limited, but we saw; grey reef shark cleaning station, octopus, cuttlefish, barracuda, nudibranch and flatworms, huge queensland groupers ( 1 1/2 meter long). Our activity before leaving was what we call a manta chase, this is where a spotter plane finds the manta rays, tells us where they are and we haul ass in our rubber boat and when we get there we jump in with a mask and snorkel and watch the mantas. It was a lot of work, out of the boat swim swim swim, into the boat and do it all again, we did however see 3 manta rays, an eagle ray and 5 turtles.
Flying back to Perth we once again stayed at the Governor Robinson, first thing to do is go to Fremantle which we heard was suppose to be very nice and it was with lots of small shops, restaurants and a local market that was open on the day we were there. We did some shopping and walked around to get the feel of the place and found a very relaxed and easy place to like. Taking the tram we headed back to Perth and enjoyed a good meal out before we tested the local pub (having lived in Australia for four years and have been to many pubs find most of them relaxed and friendly, a nice place to be). Relaxed after a good meal it was time to sit around and chat and watch the world go by.
The next day we hopped on a wine tour to check out what there is in the area, the bus took us through the green rolling hills spotted with ranches and vineyards to taste their various wines (some where very good) and have a look around their wine production area. We had a fun group with people form other parts of Australia and other parts of the world. I really liked the places where you can come back and fill up the bottles again and again for a little less cash, as we drove on we also stopped at a chocolate factory and a local market with ecological food and wine. The lunch stop was great, we ate at a low building that looked like a ranch but was actually a vineyard and restaurant with tall trees to shade the outdoor eating area. Our meal came on wooden platters filled with fresh baked bread, salads, cheese, and cold cuts, and it was very good and very filling, all good things come to an end and it was time to move on. Our last stop was at a local hotel with a long history and it was haunted as well! We found no ghosts there at the time but the hotel was very pretty and the history of the area and the area was very interesting.
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