Wildlife Aplenty on the West Coast

Greetings! We've been having exams, and thus far I have taken 3 of my 4 (the last one is tomorrow!) and so I did some travelling in the in between time of my exams.  For the past 8 days I have been in Western Australia- beginning in Perth and driving up the coast to Coral Bay, which is a small city right on the Indian Ocean just below Exmouth.  It is also the gateway to the southern portion of the Ningaloo Coral Reef, which is the largest fringing coral reef system in the world... oh and home to many of australia's whale sharks.. but we'll get to that later.

We arrived in Perth late last week, and spent the night in a hostel. We explored the city- there is a nice river that runs through perth and there are plenty of shops and cafes, but all in all I was unimmpressed with Perth as a city. I know its home to legends like Hugh Jackman and Heath Ledger, but from the parts I saw I was quite glad that I had not spent a semester there. We picked up our home on wheels, a campervan (who we fondly named Bertha), the next morning and began the week of driving (in total we drove over 3200 km this week..thats just over 32 hours of driving in a week). The first day we went to the small coast port of Fremantle, which is just below perth located right on the Indian Ocean. They have some world renowned markets in Fremantle, where we browsed and enjoyed the adorable town. It was full of character- lots of neat bars and tea rooms--very quaint. We then began our trek to the Pinnacles.

me pretending to be a pinnacle...haha

Pinnacles in Namburg Nat'l Park- there are soo many! look into the distance!

The Pinnacles are a natural wonder- no one is quite sure how they formed but it is believed to be remains of a fossilized forest that were buried in sand dunes over time. Anyway, they are these thousands of natural rock formations that spread for ages. They come in all shapes and sizes and colors, ranging from some knee high to some twice my height. They came in reds, yellows, and browns, and set against the blue sky and the yellow sand it made for a very pretty picture. It was awesome to walk through them and to see just how many there were! amazing! Also within Namburg Nat'l park we stopped at Hangover Bay and several scenic lookouts which offered us our first real taste of the Indian ocean beaches- the water is a stunning electric blue and the sand is beautiful powder white. We enjoyed seeing the coast set against the red rock of the australian soil-- such contrast was beautiful! It should also be noted that Perth is the only substantial sizable city on the west coast- with 2 billion people, and so the entirety of our trip after that first night was spent in small towns in the back of our van :) The stargazing was incredible though- so bright and clear away from the city lights. you can even see the milky way galaxy and plenty of meteorites every night.

The next day we drove up to Hamelin Pool, home of the stromatolites. Stromatolites are colonies of cyanobacteria that were responsible for giving our atmospherre the oxygen it has today. These have been studied by geologists and are estimated to be 3.5 BILLION years old, making them the oldest fossils in the world. Not to mention, being bacteria they are still alive so they are the oldest living fossils in the world. They only occur in Australia.  They aren't much to look at, just some rock formations in what appears to be tidal pools of the ocean, but the history and science of them is fascinating and soo cool to understanding the history of life on our planet. 

Stromatolites at Hamelin Pool

From there we drove to Dehanm, a coastal town on Shark Bay, Australia's world heritage listed marine park of the west coast. It is home to the largest sea grass meadows in the world and as a result is rampant in sharks, fish, and dugongs (australian version of a manatee). We also stopped at a famous beach known as Shell Beach, which consists of literally millions of small white cockle shells. Scientists do not know why there is such a plentiful amount of these shells at this one beach, but the shell layer is about 30 feet deep, and the white tinkling shells set against the blue of the Indian is a breathaking sight. Plus, it was unlike any beach I had ever been to.  Denham itself was an adorable town with plenty of beaches, and we enjoyed spending our afternoon watching the sunset there.

Shell Beach


Shells that covered the entire beach!

Continuing northward, we hit Monkey Mia... a small beach town on Shark Bay where a pod of dolphins routintely visits. Upon stopping in the morning, we were greeting by about 5 or 6 endo-pacific bottlenose dolphins. The dolphins have grown accustomed to humans, as the park rangers feed them occasionally. (they aren't fed to the point of gaining dependency on humans, however). The water is so clear we got some amazing views of these graceful creatures, and some of them had recently calved as well so we got to see baby porpoises as well :) I have always had a soft spot for dolphins. From monkey mia we drove many long hours up to Coral Bay, which is a small town right on the Ningaloo Reef.

Dolphins at Monkey Mia


We took a tour the following day which took us to snorkel on the Ningaloo Reef and to swim with Whale Sharks! the world's largest fish/shark.  The reef was beautiful, the coral not as diverse as the Great Barrier but still plenty of fish life, sea urchins, starfish, and other echinoderms. The water is so clear, and being a fringe reef the reef is much closer to shore. You could swim to parts of the reef from shore and reach the outer reef in a short 20 minute boat ride. I really enjoyed snorkelling, but I always do. Next they took us much further out to sea, about 10 km off or so and we waited to hear of a whale shark siting. The company uses planes to spot the whale sharks, they are such large animals you can spot them from the air. Whale sharks can reach up to 16 meters- which is well over 50 feet. They are HUGE beasties. The one we swam with was only about 8 meters, or 35 feet (which is still GINORMOUS!). It was such a cool experience, the shark is quite inquisitive and very gentle. You can just swim near it and marvel at its size. The sharks are also quite pretty- they are a brown color with white spots and they are filter feeders on plankton, so not dangerous at all to humans. It was without a doubt the most humbling and most amazing experience of the week, and quite possibly one of my favorite memories of Australia and all time. SO COOL! They don't mind the humans at all.

Ningaloo Reef- stunning water color and clarity

Whale Shark!

Also on the boat that day we were lucky enough to see sea snakes and a pod of humpback whales- again amazing creatures who are huge and also so intelligent and graceful in the water. It was my first experience seeing whales, so I was also quite excited about it from that perspective too.

On our last day we stopped in Kalbarri, another coastal town. We visited some of its famous beaches, notably Jacques Beach, and also visited a Parrot sanctuary where we were able to view many of australia's tropical and colorful avian life. Within Kalbarri national park there are also some increcible river gorges which we hiked to, amazing red striated rock formations set against the green river water was so picturesque. It reminded me a lot of the grand canyon.  Just driving around wildlife was rampant as well-- we saw so many emus, kangaroos, and parrots.. as well as some of the smaller australian marsupials.  All in all it was a busy but wonderful week.

Me at Jacques Beach in Kalbarri

 it is time for me to leave this wonderful place and return home to wonderful people. I get home around 11 pm on the evening of June 23-- so expect to hear from me soon!