11/12/2023
📍 Exmouth
After a couple of relaxing nights at Onslow we took off on the 4 hour drive to Exmouth. Our mission for our 2 night stay in Exmouth: swim with humpbacks and see emus.
A few kms south of Exmouth we drove up Charles Knife Road where we had breathtaking views of Charles Knife and Slothole Canyons. Truly impressive!
We arrived in Exmouth and had a swim at Town Beach which was beautiful and calm before the northerlies picked up. One of the cool things we’ve noticed in WA is you can drive on most beaches and no permit is required. This is not the case in Qld.
We topped up our food and drink supplies and headed to Ningaloo Caravan and Holiday Park. The park had nice bathroom facilities, a nice enough pool and a restaurant. Getting to know our camp neighbours we found out they had seen emus walking through the park but we didn’t see any 😔
The main event for our stay at Exmouth was the Ningaloo Shark Swim and Eco Tour on a Catamaran with Ningaloo Discovery.
Ningaloo Discovery had free pick up but we chose to meet them at the Tantabiddi boat ramp. The tour had a max capacity of 20 due to the WA whale swimming rules so the boat wasn’t too crowded.
On this tour we saw so many things we hadn’t see before - false killer whales (big black dolphin-like animals), flying fish - plus we finally swam with Humpback whales and mantas! 🥳🥳 The most amazing thing we saw was a sail fish. A very rare sight. The onboard staff had never seen one before.
Swimming with the whales was a surreal moment but one that happened quite quickly. They have a spotter plane tracking the whales and when instructed we had to jump in the water and swim very quickly and get in position. The whales then changed course and we had to swim back the way we came. After a few goes of this we stuck our heads in the water and WOW! What beauties! There were 3 whales: baby, mumma and, at the bottom, what they call an es**rt. Of course, in all the rush, the GoPro decided to not work so we have no footage 🤦🏼♀️😭 but the onboard photographer took some amazing shots. Note: you need to be a confident and competent swimmer to swim with the whales.
After a couple of hours in the open ocean we headed back to the reef and had a swim in the crystal clear blue water. Such a breathtakingly beautiful spot where we saw lots of fish and turtles.
It was a truly amazing day out and we highly recommend this tour. And, if you needed another reason to go on this tour, after a couple of days they email you all the photos from the day, for free! Many of the photos in this post were taken by the talented Ningaloo Discovery photographer ✨
Note: we didn’t see any emus in Exmouth (but somewhere on this trip we saw heaps - stay tuned!)
👉🏼 Next: Cape Range National Park
