The Kimberleys & The Ningaloo Reef

Slowly, slowly our Australian adventure is coming to an end... After leaving Katherine we headed West to the West Australian border and Kununurra - only a little bit over 500km away ;) We spent our last night in the NT Outback at the Keep River National Park, trying to finish all our fresh fruit and vegetables before entering WA and also making sure we're not taking any cane toads over the border. In case you haven't heard, cane toads are a major problem in Australia. They've introduced these frogs from Hawaii in 1935 to control the cane beetle who was eating Australia's sugar cane crops. Basically a good idea but they didn't think far enough, the toads have no native predators in Australia and have spread really quickly becoming a proper pest. They're now found on the entire East Coast of Australia, as well as the NT and unfortunately also the North of WA. But enough about frogs now; not a big fan of them, yuk yuk :/

Kununurra is pretty much the Eastern gateway to the Kimberly region. We started off with a wonderful sunset cruise on Lake Argyle, Australia's largest artificial lake. Due to a lack of a 4WD vehicle we also booked a scenic flight over the Purnululu National Park (the Bungle Bungles). Absolutely magnificent!

Sunset swim and beers in Lake Argyle

Bungle Bungles

Lake Argyle

Infinity pool overlooking Lake Argyle at our campground

We furthermore did some more gorges, Emma Gorge (on the Gibb River Road) and Geikie Gorge in Fitzroy Crossing. Again, as Wookie's not really made for any offroad driving we took the not so pretty Great Northern Highway instead of the famous Gibb River Road - but at least this gives us a very good reason to come back at some stage :)

Emma Gorge

Geikie Gorge

One of the highlights of our trip was an overnight stay at the Horizontal Waterfalls located at the Buccaneer Archipelago (https://goo.gl/maps/CNn5x) - so pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Massive tidal movements create a waterfall effect as water banks up against one side of the narrow cliff passage, to be repeated again on the turning tide - if that makes sense :) 

Horizontal Falls from above

 There are two passages, the first one wide enough to be able to drive through with the boat, the second one only 7m wide. When we had a look at them, the 'fall' was about 3m high, according to our boat captain 'way too deadly to drive through'.

Horizontal Falls - Narrow passage

We flew there with a seaplane (new for us), switched to a speed boat to cruise through the waterfalls and stayed the night on a houseboat close to the falls with more speed boat rides the next morning and a scenic flight back to Derby.

Sunset over the Buccaneer Archipelago

We then drove on to Broome where we looked for Dinosaur Footprints at Gantheaume point (unfortunately the tide was too high and we didn't see any) and enjoyed a beautiful sunset at Cable Beach. We also booked a Hover Craft tour (again another new means of transport for us) to more Dinosaur prints along Broome's coastline. Pretty awesome!

Gantheaume Point in Broome

Camel train at Cable beach at sunset

Dinosaur footprints

Leaving Broome we made our way further West to tick the last item off our Australian bucket list, swimming with whale sharks in Exmouth. Via WA's mining towns, Port Hedland, Karratha and Dampier (and checking out what Stefan was working on over the last 6 years) we reached Exmouth only to find that the wind and swell were too strong and our Friday tour got cancelled. We still made our way to the reef which is just meters off the beach to snorkel. Although snorkelling is usually always a bit boring for us being used to seeing a lot more while scuba diving we did find it pretty amazing. We even found a green turtle (by now we know where to look!) and had a bit of a swim with her. And coming back to our campground we also had the confirmation that the whale shark tour would go ahead the next day - yay!!!

And it did beat all our expectations! We went on a short snorkel beforehand to 'get into the zone'. Again, pretty good snorkelling with 3 bull rays and lots and lots of tropical fish. We then headed further South on the coast to find a whale shark. And we didn't just find one, there were so many!!! At some stage we were circelled by two sharks which made it pretty difficult to decide which direction to look at.

Whale Shark :)

It all starts out pretty hectic with people being divided into two groups of ten, being ready to jump into the water as soon as a whale shark was spotted. "Go go go!!!'' was the sign for everybody to get into the water as fast as possible and to keep your head down and then suddenly out of the blue this huuuuuge fish emerges with a mouth about a meter in width. After getting over the first 'shock' of how amazing this creature is, we tried to swim alongside him checking out the beautiful pattern of his skin. This first one was about 4meters long, a juvenile one, so a little bit smaller than the average whale shark they see at Ningaloo but really, really inquisitive, circelling us and swimming after our bubbles. After a few minutes we stopped to follow him (swimming along is pretty exhausting) only to find out he turned around and came back to us almost to check where we were. The second time we got into the water we had a huge 8 meter long whale shark and a second smaller one joining in as well. And this is how we spent the rest of the day, in and out of the water, swimming, swimming, gazing in awe at those amazing creature.

The tour guides tell you to stay 3 meters away from the fish but it was pretty much impossible with them coming up to us so close.

This has definitely been one of the highlights of our trip so far and we encourage everyone in Perth to make the trip up to Exmouth; it's not cheap but so worth it, a real out of the world experience, very very special!! Whale sharks have been known to visit Belize and Mexico's coast as well, so we'll make sure to catch them there again later this year.

We're still in Exmouth waiting to see if we're able to dive the Navy Pier tomorrow. We're not very hopeful though as the weather's been pretty shitty with strong winds and rain today and with the same forecasted for tomorrow. So, we'll probably head down to Perth where the weather will be as bad - boo :(

So where to go from here? On Monday 16th, we finally have our citizenship test (fingers crossed all goes well with this one). And for Friday the 20th we've booked our flight to Honolulu. From there it's going to be 3 weeks Hawaii, 6 weeks USA, 8 weeks Central America, 8 weeks South America and then on December 20th back to Austria for Christmas, followed by NZ in February/March.