After 4,400km of driving along the west coast and into the outback, we are back in Perth. It was quite an amazing drive, such a long way through such a vast, red-dusted landscape. We stopped at four National Parks - Nambung, Kalbarri, Cape Range and Karijini National Parks. All were impressive for different reasons, but Karijini was by far the most impressive. It is a series of massive gorges that we hiked through and swam in the swimming holes. We also stopped at a place called Monkey Mia where wild dolphins come to the beach to feed every morning!
We stayed at a place called Coral Bay for about 4 days. Coral Bay is part of the Ningaloo Reef; a reef that is quite similar to the Great Barrier Reef, but much smaller. The big draw here is that you can walk right out to the reef from the beach (unlike the Great Barrier Reef that is 25+ km from the shore). This is where we swam with whalesharks, which was one of the most impressive things we have ever done. We saw an almost 5m whaleshark who we swam with a number of times. Chad also experienced his first ocean dive where he saw a leopard shark, turtles and a sea snake among other marine life.
We met so many amazing people on our trip. Many of whom were completing a similar loop or taking it a bit further up north. We camped the whole time in our little pop tent but were amazed at how intense the camping set-ups were during our trip. So many people erected tent cities and were fully set up with showers and fridges! All would have been very useful in such an incredibly harsh environment. It truly was "roughing it".
Driving back through the interior we went through a number of mining towns and even went on a mining tour which was very informative, but also very interesting since we were driving through one of the biggest iron-ore producing areas in the world.
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| Pinnacles Desert |
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| Pinnacles Desert |
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| West Coast lookout |
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| Shell Beach |
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| Natures Window - Kalbarri National Park |
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| Enjoying the sun in Monkey Mia |
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| Camp/Car combo |
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| Circular Pool in Karijini National Park |
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| Dolphin at Monkey Mia |
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| Gorge hike in Karijini |
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| Avoiding the water in Karijini |
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| Karijini National Park |
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| Ningaloo Reef |
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| Ningaloo Reef |
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| Whaleshark Swim |
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| Whaleshark - That's us in the background! |
