Day Two

In the name of keeping good time and avoiding the mid day heat whilst hiking through the gorge, we left the hostel at an ungodly hour of the morning and drove into Kalbari National Park. (Travel sick pills advised; the dirt track roads spare no forgiveness on the vans' suspension). Expect several miles of the following view:

Somehow from the midst of pelting down the road full speed ahead, our tour guide managed to spot, capture, and then handle one of Australia's more aesthetically interesting inhabitants, the 'thorny devil':

If that wasn't enough excitement for 7am, we then hiked into the parks main gorge with the option to abseil on route.

I can assure readers I did not look so happy in the minutes proceeding this picture!

View of the gorge in Kalbari National Park

We followed this up by hiking to the parks most famous spot, aptly named 'Natures Window':

With Kalbari ticked off the list we spent the rest of the day in the van driving up to Monkey Mia.

The Beach at Monkey Mia

We arrived at our beach front hostel there in time for a sunset swim, had a bbq and then, armed with torches, we completed a night walk on the beach, during which we saw baby sharks swimming in the water, a moon rise and the sky at the starriest I have personally ever seen it.

Day Three

First thing in the morning we stood knee deep in the ocean and watched the dolphins come in for a daily feed. When the dolphins came to within a few meters of us it was an exciting site to behold, but in honesty I lost interest in the spectical reasonably quickly and felt it somehow didn't quite warrant the two hundred strong crowd fighting for space on the beach.  

In close proximity to Monkey Mia are the Stromatolites and Shell Beach. At 3 billion years old the Stromatolites are the oldest thing on the earth; and a strange sight for sunburnt eyes.

Shell beach, so named because the sand is made up enitrely of crushed shells, is the largest unspoilt stretch of beach I have ever seen. This was one of the places I felt we had to rush around and could have had a little longer with.

After a short time in each place we continued on our drive and spent the entire rest of the day in the van, stopping to watch the sunset at the tropic of capricorn sign. The brewing cyclone whilst messing up our snorkeling plans for the next few days did at least make for a beautiful sunset.



Day Four

In the morning we went snorkelling over the reef at Coral bay. With brightly coloured coral, crystal clear water, an amazing range of tropical fish, manta rays, turtles... it certainly holds its own as top spot for snorkelling.

Glass bottom boat

Coral Bay



We spent a second night in our hostel near the beach which had a good enough bar to sustain a decent evening drinking with friends.

Day Five

I'll make this one short...we drove down to the beach at Exmouth, but alas due to weather conditions were unable to snorkle, or even swim very far in the choppy conditions.
The water was brilliantly turquoise, and I know if it looked this beautiful on the back of a cyclone it must be mesmorising in good conditions: