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.
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