Swimming with Whale Sharks!

The day we had waited a looong week for had finally arrived, and it was perfect weather. There was a light cloud cover in the morning and blue skies and sunshine for most of the day. Sadly there was a good sized swell once we got out of the protection of the reef, so Dunc’s enjoyment of the day went downhill (or overboard?) after that. The medication he had taken wore off too quickly and even though he took more, it just wasn’t coping. The good news is the meds worked for Lexie and Angus and I are rarely affected so 3 out of 4 of us thoroughly enjoyed the entire day! Look at the photos and its obvious through Dunc when they were taken – if he’s bright and bubbly it was early in the day. Smiling but miserable inside, then it was later. Poor guy. The things you do for love…

Leaving aside the seasickness, it was an insanely great day. We saw sooooo much wildlife. The intention was to snorkel on the reef and then swim with the enormous whale sharks, but our tour was so much more! We saw an incredible amount of wildlife from the boat. We started with a huge bright yellow sea snake, moved on to a green sea turtle, then made our way up in size to a humpback whale! We have been desperately looking for whales since the Great Australian Bight back in April. Poor Angus was starting to worry that he would never see one and I was a bit worried too. But this day MORE than allayed our fears. We saw two single humpbacks and another pair of them too! Most of the time we saw their backs as they breached but twice we got to see that gorgeous tail flick. We could tell it was going to happen as their back breaches higher in the water, so the anticipation would build. The whole boat would go “Ooh! Whooooooaaaaaa. Yay!” Such a lovely special experience for the group of us on board. 

In addition to the humpback whales, we were lucky enough to see a pair of minke whales too. They really looked like enormous black dolphins, when compared to the lumpy humpbacks.

We also saw a dugong, which is always described as the cow of the sea. It’s kind of like a pug dog crossed with a dolphin. I always thought they were lumbering and slow, but the one we were watching had a huge shovel-nosed ray swim by and it shot off like a bullet. Gosh they can swim fast!

The best part of our animal watching experience was the last turtle we saw – a leatherback turtle! These animals are so critically endangered that of our entire crew of 7, only 2 had ever seen one before. It stayed near the boat for some time and stuck its head up twice. They can grow to the size of a small car, but this one was ‘only’ about 1m across its shell. The crew on board were nearly wetting their pants with excitement which infected the rest of us, so we are well aware how special this experience was.

And THEN there was our actual in-water experiences! We started with a snorkel on the reef. To be honest, it wasn’t as good as our previous days. It’s really an exercise in gearing up and entering and exiting the water. The current was quite strong where we were, and Lexie was particularly grumpy at having to swim so hard to stay still, let alone have to swim against it to get back to the boat. We all knew the hand signals for help, but I had the lovely David swim up and offer to take Lexie back before I even contemplated asking. Angus got a tow back to the boat as well. Dunc and I make sure we always have a noodle with us. The children don’t want one (and just quietly neither do we) but sometimes they NEED one to rest for a bit, so we will ALWAYS have one for them. And boy. I could not lift myself onto the boat after that swim! It was sooo tough. Horrible. Fortunately there was time enough to rest and recover before we had to get in for our first whale shark swim.

And WHAT a swim! These creatures are so incredibly graceful. When we first jumped in, Lexie got a shock at the fact that she couldn’t see the bottom. I was amazed at the vision of the rays of light piercing the beautiful blue water – it was just gorgeous! Then she was freaking out and the guide was pointing and shouting and all was complete chaos. I had my head up and down and couldn’t see a thing and THEN. I saw it. And Lexie saw it. And she stopped freaking out and we started swimming and all was insanely right in the world.

The rangers have very strict rules about interacting with whale sharks and we had been clearly told about how and where to swim. You need to keep 3m away from the heads and bodies and 4m away from the tail, which swishes back and forth in the most mesmerizing way. But I confess to forgetting everything and just swimming. Thank goodness I had Lexie screeching “4metres! 4metres!” in my ear. Sounds are a little distorted through a snorkel, and I was so enthralled it took a while for me to actually comprehend what she was saying. Then I was able to do the right thing, back off a bit and try to swim alongside, rather than around its tail.

Our group of 20 passengers was divided in 2, and each group was able to swim with a whale shark 3 or 4 times. We spent hours cruising the ocean. They have a spotter plane who flies above and radios the captain to tell them where to find the sharks. We saw 8 whale sharks in total, but only got to swim with 4 of them. The other 4 dived down too low when we got close. They each have personalities or moods. The first one was pretty good, but my favourite was the second whale shark. It was so chilled-out it was barely moving through the water. We were able to swim around it and see the mouth. Angus and I swam a third time together, but Lexie had had enough and poor Dunc was feeling rotten by then.

It was a WONDERFUL day and we were all completely wrecked afterwards. I crashed in bed early and the next day faced a new problem. A sore back from laying down too long vs sore muscles from that first swim. I needed to get up for my back, but I couldn’t move my arms and legs. LOL.

Exmouth, Cape Range NP and The Ningaloo Reef

I cannot understand how I can have gotten to this ripe old age without having heard of the Ningaloo Reef! Of course since planning this trip and researching other travelling families, I heard about it over and over again, but before then – nothing. In 2013 we paid a fortune to go to Daydream Island and then more money again for a day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. We rode for 2.5 hours in a boat and spent 4 hours on the reef before the return boat journey. Here you can stay on shore and just wander 10m into the sea and see THIS:

It’s insanely beautiful. We were ‘stuck’ in Exmouth a lot longer than expected as we wanted to swim with whale sharks and the tours were booked out for 6 days! Sadly there is no free-camping anywhere NEAR Exmouth, so we started off staying at the Big 4 in town. The weather was a bit average, so it gave us some chill—out days to catch up with schoolwork and washing. We then moved to the Yardie Creek Homestead Caravan Park, which was around the cape and on the edge of the National Park. We had wanted to stay in the NP, but half the campsites had been washed away in an enormous storm/flood a couple of months earlier and it was all too hard with Bertha. We could have lined up at the ranger station at 7.30am, but we thought we’d stay at Yardie Creek instead. And wasn’t THAT a mistake?!

I have never felt more uncomfortable in all our travels! We paid $48 per night for an unpowered site. (So for a patch of dirt). We paid for the first night and decided to stay a second. In the morning, Dunc had gone to pay and shower. I thought he had done it in that order, but sadly he did not. Which meant that I got a knock on the bus door at 10.45 and an aggressive woman telling me off. She reminded me that check out was 10am and asked if we were staying another night. We had stuff out everywhere and were soooooo not ready to depart. The children were doing their schoolwork. It was VERY obvious we were settled. I thought Dunc had paid and was my usual friendly self – “Of course we are staying another night! Hasn’t my husband paid yet?” Oh my goodness she was so rude and aggressive. I wanted to throw a $50 note at her, but Dunc had money with him to pay, which I explained. She was really awful.

Later in the morning our friends with the many children came to check out the sites and see how much it would cost them to stay. The mother was umming and ahhing and deciding where to go and what to do while the kids made lunch. She had stopped at the office and spoken to them and told them what she was doing, and after half an hour the horrible woman came and kicked her out! It was $7 a night more for them to stay there than elsewhere, and our friend was trying to decide whether to spend that money or not, just so the kids could play again. If the manager had been nicer, she might have made some extra money. She would certainly have had us for another 2 nights. As it was, after that, I couldn’t wait to leave! The next morning we were actually gone before 9.30am – unheard of for Duncan!!

Aside from moving backwards and forth all around Exmouth, we also got to check out the town, surrounds and do some more snorkeling on Ningaloo Reef. We went into the Cape Range NP and went to Turquoise Bay. We did the drift snorkel, where we walked 500m up the beach, swam 10-20m out to the coral and rode the drift back to where we started the walk. The first day was just gorgeous, and we saw a stunning lionfish fluttering alongside a coral disc. Sadly neither Dunc nor I had our cameras with us then. Lexie also saw a reef shark, which was unexpected and kind of freaked her out. Its rare for them to ‘interact’ with snorkelers, so there was no real risk, but she got rather a shock. It was all I could do to prevent her from screaming “Shark Shark! Evacuate!” to everyone else. She quite understandably wanted to get out of the water and just read her ‘safe’ book for the last half hour.

We went back to Turquoise Bay the next day, and I am so proud of the way Lexie faced her fears and went back snorkeling with us. We rode the drift twice as a family and she even went back over where she saw the shark. Dunc, Angus and I went back for a third drift when we were lucky enough to find another (smaller) lionfish and spot a Green Sea Turtle! It was so incredibly graceful and swam slowly by. We swam with it for a while, which was just the most amazing experience. After that, we just chilled out for the rest of the afternoon, digging in the sand and playing with the beach toys.

Coral Bay

Snorkeling at Point Quobba was a great introduction for Dunc, as Coral Bay and since then has consisted of a LOT of snorkeling. We had passed the latitude for the official "Tropic of Capricorn" and took great joy in being "in the tropics now".

The sea water seems a little cool initially (like for the first 30 seconds) but as soon as we are in and looking under the surface we don’t even notice it. And after that we are acclimatized and all is well. Coral Bay was beautiful. We didn’t even take the car out of the trailer, as it is such a teeny tiny little town we could walk everywhere. We went snorkeling in the bay every day and on our last day we walked right up the beach and rode the current/swam right back to our spot. It was rather a long way and we were very glad to have our noodles with us. We had bought the children’s noodles from home, and I realized that Lexie’s noodle was in fact the same one she had when we went swimming all the time when I was pregnant with Angus. That would make it 9 years old – probably the oldest pool noddle in Australia! So we bought the kids a new noodle each and Dunc and I adopted their old ones and we are all happy.

Dunc has been playing with his GoPro camera underwater and Lexie has been busy using her waterproof camera too. We’ve seen sting rays and the most amazing collection of tropical fish. There is a little black and white stripy fish with a blue line running down its nose, which is so curious and completely fearless. They almost swim INTO your hands. We ran into our friends once more so we had a whole tribe of children on the beach and snorkeling in the water. We got all sorts of interesting looks and glances, and we guess that people were looking at Dunc with 2 women and 8 children and jumped to all sorts of conclusions. LOL.

Quiet days at Point Quobba

From Carnarvon we drove along our ill-fated ‘short cut’ to Point Quobba – a “free camp” which was $11 per night and right on the coast. Thanks to a wonderful morning at the Carnarvon Farmers Market and our horrible short cut, we got there rather late and we worried about finding a spot. Point Quobba has lots of dilapidated shacks and camp spots and not a lot of big rig space. We ended up detaching the trailer and squishing into the driveway of a ‘rarely used’ shack. As our luck would have it, we had both grown sons of the owner and some family friends with the key ALL turn up during our 3 days there!

Point Quobba is a sheltered lagoon with amazing snorkeling. It’s the start of the Ningaloo Reef, and has a sheltered little beach great for kids. The lagoon is great to snorkel in, but at low tide the coral is really shallow (like 20cm – hard to float over) and at high tide, the lagoon is almost overcome and the current is rather strong. Thanks to my sister-in-law’s warnings, I am fully aware of the dangers of this ocean and I was worried about being washed out of the lagoon to the (un-life guarded) open sea. It was perfect in between though. The children and I went snorkeling the first day and I quickly convinced Dunc that he had to join us. He willingly changed into his bathers and entered the water to knee deep. He rather less willingly got up to thigh deep and eventually joined us fully submerged and snorkeling. “It was COOOOLD!” is his excuse.