Exmouth - Cape Range National Park

We spent 2 nights in Exmouth to give us a chance to explore the town and stock up on essentials before we headed into Cape Range National Park. Exmouth is a small town set in incredibly harsh and arid surrounds. The vegetation is scrubby and low, for the most part, and not particularly attractive. They are in the midst of a prolonged drought, which really doesn't help the situation, and like most arid towns, the footpaths are all gravel rather than grass. I think, if we took the time, we probably would have seen a lot of low growing wildflowers dotted in the scrub but only Tilda and I are interested in that, so we didn't. The town has a range of facilities, perhaps the most puzzling was 2 IGAs across a small mall from each other.... and their significantly different prices. It was painful buying 10L of water (for drinking as the water isn't great to drink, although people do) for $10... when we had bought 10L of water for $4 at Port Hedland.

As we came into town we saw Emu signs, warning motorists of emus on the road, but we didn't see any. Then in the caravan park, we saw signs advising people not to feed the emus as they can get aggressive. It wasn't until later in the second day that we finally saw some emus; we saw an adult and 2 young walking down the street and then later we saw an adult and 7 young in the caravan park. It was very cool to be so close to wild emus. We'd seen some before at Flinders Ranges, but not this close. These ones weren't overly friendly but they certainly weren't bothered by people either. Given that the adult in the caravan park probably stood taller than Greg with its neck stretched, there was no way I would get close enough to see how friendly it was. Although Greg did see an emu taking bread out a lady's hand, over her shoulder, later in the day. I think that would have freaked me out! Or I would have loved it. Not sure which.

Walking down the main street

In the caravan park (above and below)

We moved on to Cape Range National Park to be close to the beaches and Ningaloo Reef. We stayed at Tulki Campground. The NP campgrounds all cost $10 per adult and $2.20 per child over 5, so for $22.20 a night we had a site 150m from the beautiful beach, with a very clean pit loo and no other services. The volunteer campground host raked out our gravel site before we arrived and it was clean and looked so very fresh and tidy. We could sit and watch whales breaching, spouting and tail slapping behind the breakers from our caravan.... how perfect and lucky were we! And there were whales galore!

The view not far from our caravan!

We walked down to Tulki Beach after getting set up and gosh!!! It is so stunning! It is a white sandy beach with crystal clear blue ocean. Near shore the water is so calm, with small swell only, as it is sheltered by the reef. It is hard to tell distances from shore but the waves break over the reef somewhere between 1 and 2km out, so there is a long, calm stretch. Greg and Tilda waded thigh deep in the water and were soon spotting black tipped reef sharks, up to about 1m in length, coming within about 5 feet of them. Tilda loved it! She's always read up about sharks and is very interested in them and she thought it was fantastic. I could see the sharks from the shore, where I had stayed with Rory as we didn't have the right shoes on to walk over the oyster covered rocks.We all saw a couple of blue spotted sting rays as well.

At one point I was standing there, ankle deep in water and I felt my jaw drop at just how incredibly beautiful and awe inspiring the sight was. As I watched the small 10-15cm high waves rise up over the rocky bottom, the water was so clear it refracts the bottom and you can see a wall of rocky picture rise up. It is so hard to describe but I honestly think it's the first time all year my jaw has dropped at how amazing what I was seeing was.

We went to the Visitor Information Centre, which has some really good displays and information on the reef, animals and plants. I took my time studying the snakes preserved in bottles as it seems pretty much all of the ones we were likely to see in the spinifex and grass around us were all highly venomous... not sure I became a snake expert, all I really learned was that if any of us got bitten it was probably going to be highly or dangerously venomous so we'd better get help asap.

And of course, the sunsets over the ocean were amazing!