Leaving Sydney on Saturday, September 7, we flew northwest all the way across Australia to the Indian Ocean and the town of Broome. Australia has six states (Sydney is in New South Wales), and our next three weeks would be spent in the state of Western Australia - starting at the top and heading down to Perth in the south.
NOTE: We decided to break our time in Western Australia into two blog entries. If we kept it in a single entry, you'd still be reading it into next week!
Broome is quite a small town, especially compared to Sydney, with a population of about 15,000 and a sizable aboriginal community. We stayed overnight in a local hotel and walked around town. We drove to Broome's fabled Cable Beach to get our first glimpse of the Indian Ocean, where stunning turquoise water stretched almost to the horizon, fading into a brilliant royal blue. No photograph can do it justice. We returned later to take in the sunset over the Indian Ocean. Beautiful!
The next morning we Uber'd to the local offices of THL (an Australian mega-RV renter) and picked up the Maui Ultima campervan which would be our tiny home for the next three weeks.
It was considerably smaller than the Ciaowagen, but had the essentials - bed, small fridge, wet bath, sink, and two-burner stove.
One interesting difference between American and Australian RVs is that rather than having a toilet "black tank" that dumps with a hose (often referred to as the "stinky slinky"), the vans use a cassette toilet system that is removed every couple days and dumped into a waste water receptacle. It's actually a much easier system to use.
Another difference in Western Australian campgrounds (aka: holiday parks) is that the laundromats only have washing machines, and the park provides plenty of clotheslines for outdoor drying. With the warm dry climate they are typically dry in no time..
After getting groceries and ensuring we knew how to operate everything (we had downloaded the rental company's app with a lot of helpful YouTube videos), we camped locally and took off the next morning to drive north into the Dampier Peninsula. We stayed overnight in a small aboriginal community called Lombadina that used to be a Catholic mission. While there, we visited the small open-air church with a cross painted with aboriginal symbols.
We also hiked a mile along 4x4 tracks out to their mostly-deserted beach to catch another beautiful sunset.
The next day we drove south and we stopped at another aboriginal community, Beagle Bay. They are famous for their Church of the Sacred Heart - the altar and decorations are covered in shells and mother of pearl. Even the holy water font is a large shell.
We drove past Broome and then headed west for several hours, reaching Eighty Mile Beach (actually over 100 miles long). The slope is very gradual so that the beach is much wider during low tide than high and the water is many different shades of blue. You can walk out quite far and still be in only 3" of water. Most of the area is uninhabited, and even with the holiday park nearly full, the beach was deserted as we walked along it.
We did another beach walk at sunset which was just as magical.
Next, we drove away from the ocean and into the outback, spending two days at Karijini National Park, a landscape of ancient rock - some of the oldest on earth - where erosion has carved deep gorges. We first visited Dale's Gorge where we hiked down a staircase to a swimming hole by a cascading waterfall.
We then hiked through the gorge - the trail was sometimes broad but at other times we needed to scramble along rock ledges above the water. A couple miles later, we climbed back out of the gorge via a steep rock path ...
...and then hiked back to our car along the rim of the gorge with beautiful wildflowers just blooming during their early spring.
The next day we drove to a different area of the national park and saw deep and sometimes intersecting gorges from lookouts along the way.
We drove south to the town of Exmouth, gateway to beautiful Ningaloo Reef which stretches more than 200 miles along the western coast. Unlike the Great Barrier Reef, where many of the coral beds have bleached, Ningaloo was in excellent shape.
We spent a full day on a snorkeling trip exploring the reef with 3 Islands Whale Shark Dive which provided all the gear and an underwater photographer. The water was clear but cold, so we used wetsuits. The photographer provided some of the photos below.
The crew did an excellent job educating us about the reef and safety procedures, and there was plenty of free time to enjoy the views as we rode out to the reef.
One of the highlights of our day was an opportunity to swim with the whale sharks - magnificent animals who feed on plankton in this bay.
On our return trip, a pod of 5-10 humpback whales, who give birth in these relatively warm waters before returning to Antarctica were just hanging out and having fun.
While still in the Exmouth area we traveled to Cape Range National Park in the upper part of the peninsula. We hiked to see Yardie Creek which has cut a gorge through red rock before reacheing the ocean.
We visited Turqoise Bay, another beautiful beach with water in multiple shades of blue.
On our way back to Exmouth, we drove up to a lookout where we could see the tall antennas of the Very Low Frequency (VLF) submarine communications system built by the U.S. in the 1960s and still survive 300 kph wind. The tallest antenna is 1,261 feet tall. Doug used the VLF system back during his submarine days in the Navy in the 1970s.
We left the Exmouth peninsula and drove several hours south to the Shark Bay peninsula, a World Heritage Site, setting up camp in the town of Denham. We'll pick up the rest of our time in Western Australia in our next blog entry.
How absolutely delightful!! Such a glorious adventure and so glad for you to share it with us.