Swimming with the whale sharks at Ningaloo!

This was the highlight of the trip.

We went out on a boat tour with a group. They have a spotter plane overhead which guides the boat to the whale sharks then a group of swimmers is dropped off in front of the shark. The shark may swim straight, circle or even dive, in which case you move on to another shark. There were plenty of them. We had three swims with three different sharks. It's easy to swim along with the shark with a snorkel and there is no need to dive below the surface.
The sharks were about six meters long and you can see their mouth is open in some shots as they feed on plankton and other small things.

 There were other things of interest there as well. A shark took too close an interest in Peter at one stage, approaching head on. One of the tour people saw it happening and the photographer got a shot of the shark swimming away. We celebrated the encounter later on the boat.

There were also Orcas (Killer whales) and rays.

and other tourists

Nearly home

Here is where we have been so far with just one day to go flying from Barcaldine back to Caboolture.

22 June - Weather coming. Pack up and go home.

We had our last night of camping at Tulki Beach.

We had planned on a couple more days snorkelling but with rain forecast there was a chance we would get caught here so we packed up and headed north east to stay a day or so ahead of the weather.

Our "Spot" tracker sends a position fix every ten minutes via satellite to a website so if we have a problem at least there is some track of a recent position. We also carry an EPIRB. Her is us on our way home - Exmouth to Broome to Tennant Creek to Cloncurry.

We have had stops in Broome , Tennant Creek, tonight in Cloncurry, tomorrow in Barcaldine then home on Wednesday afternoon!
Don't tune out just yet. We have high hopes of publishing great whale shark photos in a couple of days.

19 to 22 June - North west cape

We spent three nights at Tulki Beach in the Cape Range national park. This was a big part of why we came here - we were surrounded by emus, euros, osprey AND whale sharks, orcas, humpbacks, stingrays and turtles! The Ningaloo Reef runs the length of the peninsular and is a protected marine park. A warm tropical current (Leeuwin) swings down from the north along side the reef which teems with fish and plankton feeding sharks, whales etc. We were taken to this area on the other side of the reef. The water was noticeably warmer. It was there that we swam with the whale sharks!!!!! We will have photos of this in a couple of days - so watch this space.

It was worth coming all this way just for the whale shark swim. It was unbelievable to be swimming along side a 6 metre long fish on the surface. The staff on the boat talked about interacting with the whale shark which it was happy to do. Probably because we were no threat to it.We were also very excited to see orcas up close next to the boat.

The flying is also a large part of the adventure and Lisa had an exciting flight into Karratha on the way here. Karratha has fixed and rotary tourist  flights, normal Qantas and Virgin flights plus many chopper flights out to the rigs, so the air traffic controller when we were coming in was VERY busy. There were NO breaks in transmission and she had to listen carefully to everything to be able to respond immediately. It was hard to get a word in to provide reports.

Turquoise Bay was great for snorkelling. We spent the whole day exploring and trying to photograph the coral and fish.

17 to 18 June - Port Headland

What a contrast from Cape Leveque and Broome to the industrial town of Port Hedland and to top it of it was raining.

There is also salt mined from evaporation ponds along much of this part of Australia's coast.

22 June Cape Range NP

We have just spent four amazing days at the national park and Ningaloo Reef. See attached the after photo post four days of snorkeling the reef and no access to fresh water for showers. We have been out of range and running out of battery power for camera and go pro. Lots of photos to come including swimming with whale sharks. Tonight we are recovering in a hotel in Broome.

One day of rain

Port Hedland and the first rain we have seen on the whole trip since we left the sunshine coast. It's due to clear by tomorrow when we are scheduled to fly to Exmouth.