Our Perth-Exmouth road trip along the west coast started on October 28 – exactly two weeks after we left for our trip to Australia. We bought our car the Monday before. A Honda CR-V in brown. Great to drive, “low” mileage (250,000 kilometres is low by Australian standards) and not old yet. We knew immediately that this was going to be our car. We spent the days before the road trip setting it up. A string of lights and a blanket were essential, of course. In the hostel we met our travelmates, Basti and Johanna. They also wanted to go up the west coast, so we decided to go together.
Thursday, 28/09/2017
On Thursday, we left the hostel and headed to Jurien Bay! On our way we drove through Cervantes and also through the Pinnacle Desert. This section of the desert is known for its many small stones: pinnacles. The weather was not so good, but we could see extraordinary contrasts through the dark clouds in the sky! Then we continued our journey. Jurien Bay is about 200 kilometres from Perth and has a beautiful beach with light blue water. It was late when we arrived, so we slept at an abandoned campsite.
Friday, 29/09/2017
On Friday morning, we rearranged our bed in the car so that boxes could be stored underneath. Then we drove to the beach again and went for a walk on the pier. Afterwards we planned the coming days.
Saturday, 30/09/2017
Saturday we went on to Dongara, about 132 kilometres further north. The beach was unfortunately very dirty, so we drove to Port Denison, only about 3 kilometres further south. You could even drive onto the beach, which we didn’t want to miss, of course. We set up our camping chairs and enjoyed the sun; only Carlo actually made it into the sea, which was still really cold. Afterwards, we looked for a new campsite in Kalbarri, a very nice and small place 221 kilometres away from Port Denison. We cooked some quick food and enjoyed the view of the sun just setting in the sea.
Sunday, 01/10/2017
The next day was Basti’s birthday. We drove to the Kalbarri National Park. This was enormous – with cliffs and a big river. It was a huge accomplishment for me as I am afraid of heights and this precipice was very deep. We were in the national park at lunchtime of all times, without paying attention to the warning about extreme heat around noon (“Heat kills”). In the evening we stayed at the same campsite as the night before, the view was just beautiful and we prepared a delicious birthday dinner for Basti.
Monday, 02/10/2017
On Monday, we drove into town. We sat down in a small internet café and applied for our pension. Yes, really – you have to apply for your pension here as a Work and Traveller. Afterwards, we took the cars to the beach again. However, the sand was so soft that both cars got stuck. When we managed to get out, our friends’ car started to smoke so badly that we drove to the garage. Great disaster – the clutch was broken. However, a repair would have been far too expensive for the two of them, so they decided to continue driving normally and give up the 4WD setting. After that, we set off for the next campsite in Hamelin Pool, 249 kilometres north. Unfortunately, we found out later that the water there had a brown tint. We noticed it while cooking, thinking it was already the soup in the pot, but it was only boiling water from the crane at that point.
Tuesday, 03/10/2017
The next morning Johanna woke up with brown legs. Not tanned from the sun, but legs discoloured by the brown water from the shower. You didn’t know whether to laugh or be disgusted. So we quickly made our way to Denham, another 130 kilometres north. This town was not special, yet the water was even more. I still wonder why the water has this colour separation. We got some information at the information centre and went on to Monkey Mia, only 26 kilometres further. Fantastic! The campsite was very nice, huge and directly by the sea. We went to the beach and saw dolphins swimming in the water! Monkey Mia is famous for that. So we swam with dolphins in the water – free-living and absolutely not shy dolphins! We didn’t want to leave the water. But it quickly got cold and dark, so we were looking forward to going to bed.
Wednesday, 04/10/2017
In the morning we got up extra early to attend a dolphin feeding. We also saw a turtle, which was briefly more interesting than the free-living dolphin swimming in front of and waiting for its fish. The rest of the day we sat in the café, used the electricity there to charge the laptop and drank cold drinks. In the evening, we thought we might as well go out for dinner, so we booked a place in the restaurant next to the beach. Our highlight was of course the dessert: a lava cake!
Thursday, 05/10/2017
The next day was not very special. We waited for Johanna and Basti, who had decided to go on a boat tour that day, and then drove into the François Perón National Park. Unfortunately, since you need 4WD for most of the trails, we saw very little and then headed to Carnavon, which is 348 kilometres from Monkey Mia. We stopped at a campsite just before Carnavon and spent the night there.
Friday, 06/10/2017
Friday we reached Carnavon – a small town. After a short stop, we continued our journey north. On the way, we stopped at a section of beach in MacLeod for snorkelling. As usual, the water was light blue to turquoise and inviting for a swim. The current was strong, so I had to keep my splint on around my ankle. (torn ligament) The underwater world was great! Lots of small fish and corals that looked like brains. Carlo even found a fishing rod that was still intact and of course had to take it with him. Unfortunately, we couldn’t transport it in our car, so we left it on the beach for the next fisherman. As we made our way back to the car, we even saw a small shark swimming in the water! Afterwards we visited the cliffs and the famous Quobba Blow Holes, which were formed from the stones in the sea. It was breathtaking! The water shot out of the stones and formed a huge fountain.
Saturday, 07/10/2017
Finally we reached Coral Bay, 238 kilometres away from Carnavon. It’s a very small but cute town with great sea for snorkelling. And then along the way, Carlo fulfilled my biggest dream: not only will I see whales, but I will also swim with them! The tour was supposed to take place on Monday. We had to have a drink first! We drove to a campsite where almost a tornado was going through. It was so windy that we went to bed early and didn’t sit outside with our friends like we did every night.
Sunday, 08/10/2017
The day after was definitely not the best. First, we made our way to Ningaloo – it actually looked like a town on the map! – then we realised the place didn’t exist and headed back. Just before Coral Bay, we turned off to a beach. We were without our friends as they had booked a tour for that day, plus the road was 4WD only. After about 15 minutes of driving through nowhere, with rocky and bumpy roads and no connection, we reached the place where we got stuck. At first we thought “Oh, not bad. Let’s go to the beach first”, which was only 100 metres further down. The beach was lonely, just like the surroundings. Nobody was there and we didn’t want to swim. Who knows what kind of animals were swimming in the water – it was not a separate, guarded beach. When we saw our car in the sand, we knew it was bad. Both of us put on 50+ lotion as a precaution (there was no shade) and got to work. We couldn’t go forwards and we couldn’t go backwards. We were stuck. I wrote to our friends so that someone would know we had quite a problem. The mood became more and more stressed. Meanwhile, our friends tried to contact nearby campsites as they couldn’t come themselves (“4WD only”). Two and a half hours later we reached the top of the hill with squealing tyres, full throttle and in first gear. We felt like we had reached Mount Everest! Our friends were also happyily smiling when they saw us. As if the day couldn’t get any worse, our whale tour for the next day was also cancelled due to too few participants.
Monday, 09/10/2017
The next day we set off for Exmouth, our final destination, 150 kilometres from Coral Bay. Once we arrived at the campsite, we went straight to the Wi-Fi and took it easy for the day. Enough excitement the day before!
Tuesday, 10/10/2017
On Tuesday we got the happy news: tomorrow there would be a humpback whale tour! Of course we said yes. Afterwards, we made our way to the tip of Exmouth. We saw a wreck from 1919 in the sea which was quite exciting, but unfortunately it was too far from the coast. As the water was very rough, we decided to go to the Cape Range National Park. There were many beaches to visit along the coast – we chose Turquoise Bay, where Carlo went snorkelling. In the evening we went to bed early as we had to get up at 5:15am the next morning. We had to be in Coral Bay at 7:30am.
Wednesday, 11/10/2017
Wednesday was one of the best days of our lives.
I’ll try to tell the short version: First we could hardly get up, it was just too early, and then it couldn’t go fast enough! We arrived and got our wetsuits and fins straight away. We took a bus to the boat, which then took us to Ningaloo Reef. 15 minutes later we started snorkelling directly on the reef. It was breathtaking. We saw not only a lot of different colourful fish, but also reef sharks and turtles. The coral world was also impressive – blue, red and yellow corals everywhere. We didn’t want to leave the water at all. Afterwards, a small plane searched the sea for whales. In the meantime, we had lunch. Unfortunately, only whales with calves were sighted, which meant for us: no swimming with the giants. However, the sadness passed quickly, because we already got to see whales with their “little” calves. Words cannot describe what a fantastic moment those sightings was. So many humpback whales! And they were so close! As “compensation” we were allowed to swim with manta rays afterwards. One flap of their fins and they were already 5 metres away; give them a chase! The last snorkelling was again at Ningaloo Reef. Of course we saw sharks and turtles again, but also corals that were over 1000 years old. They looked more like thick big stones. It was forbidden to touch them, which turned out to be very difficult, they were really huge after all. At the end we all enjoyed a champagne toast to this great day!
Thursday, 12/10/2017
The day after was rather quiet again. We were still totally exhausted from the previous day, probably also because we had gotten quite a sunburn. We decided that we would head back to Perth tomorrow, as Johanna and Basti had also found a job. That marked the end of our Perth-Exmouth road trip.
