First, we needed to make the 8 hour flight journey from Hong Kong to Perth. I still find this type of travel mind-blowing. When I was a kid, I was a bit obsessed with the movie 10 Things I Hate About You and the only reason I knew the city of Perth even existed is because Health Ledger grew up there. Now, 20 years later, I have learned a few more things about Perth, such as:
- Easy access to magical beaches
- Those magical beaches almost all have sharks
- People do get eaten by those sharks
- For a safer activity, there's great wine
So yeah, I'm pretty much an expert now. First stop on our WA adventure? Winery. Of course, that was only after doing a hilarious amount of shopping because Cathay lost our bag with all the camping stuff in it! We bought discount sheets, towels, headlamps, and then some extra crap like glow sticks and water guns. We went food shopping. Stopped for a couple coffees in this process, because, "when in Rome..." Once our rental car (a Rav4 decked out with a 5 person tent that collapses on top) was fully stocked, we hit the road! In truth, we only hit the road for 20 minutes and then stopped at our pre-selected winery for lunch.
Nate and I have always loved road trips, but we quickly saw the impact living in Hong Kong has had on our kids after our winery stop. After about 10 minutes in the car, Isla informed us she was done driving. To be fair, 10 minutes is about the longest taxi ride we ever take around the city. We carefully explained to our nearly 3 year old child that we actually had to drive 1500 kilometers over 5 days, and yes, she did need to stay strapped into that thing called a car seat! Luckily, she adjusted quickly, minus a few hilarious moments of her needing to pee with no actual toilet available for hours! (I will forever have vivid memories of demonstrating to her how to squat in the middle of the blazing hot desert while she cried hysterically screaming, "NO, JUST HOLD MEEEE!!!")
From Perth on the first day, we drove up to Jurien Bay and got incredibly lucky to score a beachfront campsite at a park called Sandy Cape. The next day, we heard our luggage had made it to Perth and they would send it to a town called Geraldton for us by 5pm. We said, "thanks, but no thanks" because we would already be past Geraldton by 2pm. They agreed to send it to a minuscule airport in Shark Bay where we would get it the following day.
Off we drove from Jurien Bay to Kalbarri National Park, where orange-red cliffs plunge into the ocean. We stayed at a more traditional campsite this night, complete with a pool, playground and "jumping pillow," the latest rage in Aussie camping. It’s like a ground-level moon bounce and provides hours of entertainments for kids and adults. They deflate the pillow at sundown and I suspect this is because once the adults start drinking, there would be some serious jumping showdowns on the thing and probably some injuries. So, we jumped and swam our little hearts out until sundown and then took some much-needed showers!
After a night in Kalbarri, our next destination was the very appropriately named Shark Bay. Because it’s Australia, you are casually advised not to swim far out in this area, but it might warrant more of a warning in my opinion! We were lucky enough to interact with wild dolphins and every one of them had huge shark bite scars on them. Upon arrival in shark bay, we quickly noticed two things - crazy intense wind, which we were actually thankful for because it kept the flies away, and beautiful swirly purple seashells everywhere. Isla and I quickly got to work filling buckets with shells and even smuggled a few back into Hong Kong the following week. Before dinner, we made our way to the Shark Bay “airport” which was basically a shed next to a gravel parking lot. We found a nice lady who said, “Yep, I saw that green piece of luggage. We figured you were staying at the Monkey Mia resort so we sent it there!” And the wild goose chase continued!
The next day, we drove over to Monkey Mia, which turned out to be an amazing side trip. The park rangers let us feed fish to the wild bottle nose dolphins as they swam around our legs, we got some great flat whites and muffins, and chased emus all around a giant chess board and on to the beach. We got so distracted, we nearly forgot to actually pick up the green bag!
After our fill of pastries, we headed out for perhaps our most unique camping experience. We swooped inland to an outback station and camped along the dried up riverbed in a massive wilderness area. It was such a neat and quirky place. The “healing tubs” died our swimsuits the color of the red dirt and the toilets were contained in a large vertical piece of rusty tubing, but cooking sausages and then marshmallows over a fire as the sun set felt very fun and special. I'm glad the marshmallows were a hit as I had to bring those bad boys all the way from Hong Kong! Australia only has those circus-like marshmallows that have a powered sugar coating on them, so a bit of advanced planning was necessary. Over night, when I got up to feed Monroe at 5am, I saw just a hint of sunrise while tons of kangaroos hopped through the riverbed. (One of the very few benefits of getting up to feed a baby at night!) When she was done eating, I nearly stayed awake to watch more...Nearly. These peaceful outback moments then came to an abrupt ending when we woke up to extreme heat (the wind had stopped completely), ants all over our feet once we stepped outside, and lots of flies! We packed up and got the heck out of there!
When the temperature hit 110 degrees in the mid morning, we decided I may have made a slight error in the itinerary planning. We were heading straight north, further into the tropics, and planning to camp that night. We bailed on the camping plan and opted for an air conditioned cabin in Coral Bay, a teeny tiny beach town with a handful of snorkel/dive shops, a bakery (hands down, my second favorite part!) a couple food/supply shops, a large bottle shop, and 2 options for overnight accommodation. The large bay is calm, shallow and full of wildlife. Bright blue stingrays would swim around your feet (my most favorite part!) and the reef could be reached by swimming out for about two minutes. Monroe can’t wear sunscreen yet and it was so darn hot that we ended up just clothing her head to toe and then dipping her all the way in the water. Then we’d play on the beach for 30 seconds and she’d be mostly dry again, so we repeated the process over and over. Clothe, Rinse, Repeat! By the time we were leaving Coral Bay 24 hours later, I felt like I knew half the people there. We saw and interacted with the same families, restaurant waiters, bakery cashier, etc, multiple times, so we quickly felt very attached to the place! But, we were heading to an Airbnb house rental further north next, so we were looking forward to unloading the car and exploding all of our dirty belongings into a house for the next 4 days.
Exmouth is a town about 20 minutes outside of Cape Range National Park, which much of the Ningaloo Reef runs along. The Ningaloo Reef is very similar to the Great Barrier Reef in terms of wildlife and diversity, but you can swim to large portions of it right from shore, which makes it highly accessible (you know, once you are already as remote as Exmouth!) Until living in Australia, I had never heard the term, "drift snorkel," but the Ningaloo Reef has quite a few of these. It goes just how the name would suggest: You drive into the National Park, park at a specific beach, walk about 500 meters on the beach against the direction of the current, then swim out into the ocean, right into the current and just stay completely still as the current pulls you over the reef. I read up on these drifts beforehand quite a bit, and the commentary can be summed up as: "Enjoy a unique and pristine part of the reef as you drift across a diverse eco-system and then as you look up on the beach and see a marker, get the hell out of the water!!" The most popular drift snorkel over Turquoise Bay eventually hits an area where strong currents collide and pull you right out to sea in an area where there's nowhere to climb back out, so the caution is appropriate, but also a bit hilarious when put alongside the description of such a peaceful, casual snorkel. I'm happy to report that we enjoyed the pristine reef and did manage to get out in time!
The finale of the trip was a full day boating excursion to swim with whale sharks, the biggest fish in the world (or so the brochure told me). I've been on a number of ocean passages around Australia so I was familiar with how rough the water regularly gets, but this ride took the cake in terms of my closeness to puking! It was totally worth the sickness though. Nate and I had planned to take turns in the water, but the crew would hear nothing of this. "Go get in the water, mates! We'll hang with your children!" is what they said. We didn't argue. Once some whale sharks were spotted, the crew yelled at us to hop down to the back of the boat and hang there while the captain steered us into place. Then, with the boat still moving, we were instructed to jump in and hold on to a rope until they said to let go. The boat pulled us right into place so the whale shark was headed straight for us. It was a bit intimidating, to say the least! Then, as the massive animal got closer, we each picked a side and swam fast to stay alongside her for a good few minutes. We were lucky enough to do this three more times that day. I had to pinch myself as it seemed like the weirdest dream ever (except the one where I ate my own fingers a while back. That was weirder.) When we eventually got back on board, totally exhilarated, we found Isla's entire body covered in marker drawings and a variety of marine animal stickers with a huge smile on her face. She, too, apparently had the time of her life!
