Broome to Ningaloo

As promised last blog post I am writing this from the shores adjacent to the crystal clear waters of Ningaloo Reef, where we have finally slowed down to a more relaxed tourist pace.  There really isn’t very much along the 635 km from Broome to Port Headland, so after leaving Broome, we sampled the delights of the North Western Highway, stopping off for a night a the southern end of 80 mile beach.  We veered into Port Headland for some cheap fuel and to check out the enormous iron ore boats in the port – I port that I helped to build I might add … well in a very tangential way, by reviewing some of the approvals documentation BHP.  Unless you earn a squillion dollars working for a mining giant or are locked up as an asylum seeker, there isn’t much to keep you in Port Headland, so we motored south-west into Millstream Chichester National Park.

This park is less well known than its nearby cousin Karajini, but we really enjoyed our 2-night stay.  The park is well within the tropical arid zone, and so we were treated to some spectacular Spinifex dominated scenery.  We did a couple of walks, saw some good birds and camped by the Fortescue River.  DEC has recently been upgrading the park and as part of the interpretation, they have developed MCNP FM – a radio station that broadcasts information about the park – we tuned in and it was really quite interesting and well done.  From MCNP we trucked south for another 600+ km and finally hit Exmouth, the gateway to Ningaloo Reef.

We had one night in Exmouth to get organised before heading into Cape Range National Park.  I had been to this one for “work” early in 2010, and was really excited.  Basically, we spent three days snorkelling off the beach, chasing birds and chilling out in some cooler weather (finally).  The snorkelling really was great – and just so easy to flop in off the beach.  We had a bit of a science geek moment when we both saw the species that we did our honours projects on – Black-footed Rock Wallabies for Luke and Stylophora pistillata (a coral) for me.  Cape Range NP is adjacent to the northern part of Ningaloo, and since we wanted to experience as much as possible, we took the scenic 4WD track 150 km south to Coral Bay at the southern end of the reef.

Coral Bay is just a sleepy little beachside tourist town with two caravan parks and not much else.  We booked on a diving and snorkelling with manta rays tour and had an amazing day.  The first dive site was ok and we saw a handful of potato cod and a group of three large lion fish hanging around in a cave.  We had a humpback whale and her calf swimming around at the site, and Luke got a very fleeting glance of something very large and white while we were under the water!  Once back on the surface, we got a really great look at the whales who were cruising along very close.  We then went off in search of manta rays.  We found a couple that we managed to follow for a while and one was doing summersaults whilst feeding.  The others were cruising lazily, but were too fast for us mere humans on snorkel and they got away after a few minutes.  The second dive was at a great site with really high coral cover and diversity.  It was also the location of a reef shark cleaning station and at one point I counted seven of them.  We also saw dolphins, turtles, lots of fish and seabirds. 

Now we are both pooped and are off for dinner at the local seafood restaurant and then I’m sure it’ll be an early night.  Heading south from here to Shark Bay, so next blog will be from there with more tales of maritime adventures.

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