7 Days In Sunny June

So after the first Whale Shark dive booking was cancelled due to rain; please note it rained for 2 hours then glorious sun and blue sky appeared we headed around the cape towards some of the bays that were for snorkeling which included Turquoise bay, oyster stacks and the lakes, to me the snorkeling was average at best when you compare it to the Barrier Reef or the Red Sea in Egypt but it kept my Chilean friend and Jess very busy. There were some big fishes but the coral was mostly dead and of the coral that was still alive it was hard coral which is the most boring and lifeless. Camping in this national park cost $7 per person per night and unfortunately we had to pay for all three of us as we were spotted going in but more about this smuggling trick later. When you pay this much you get a site that is usually at an impossible gradient or/and is of gravel or large rocks so you have to situate your tent to best suit how you want your back in the morning with the options being modest pain all the way through to why can’t I move my arms and legs pain! These campsites only have the most basic toilet facilities (hole in ground) and generally people tend to go to sleep pretty early due to entertainment being practically zero….oh not this night the night after I got hardly any sleep as the tent leaked when what must have been a grade 5 cyclone hit it square on we had a group of French tits camped 30 meters away (a considerable distance) waking me up with their loud talking. I let the 01:00 incident go as generally I get woken by Jess’s snoring which sounds a bit like a toilet cistern filling up around that time and I presumed they would be off to bed fairly shortly………nope they happily carried on until 03:00 and that was when I had to say something. It went along the lines of “ANY CHANCE YOU ARE GOING TO BED ITS F*&%ING THREE IN THE MORNING” Although Jess after proof reading this remembers it with more %&*£$%&!!!!! The next day sleep deprived and smelling like I had not washed (which was the case) we arrived back at Exmouth where we booked ourselves onto the next whale shark dive hoping that the weather would be kind to us. It wasn’t it was overcast and windy which when you are wet the wind cuts deeper than an unhappy emo* kid who is hell bent on self harm.

The whale shark is a slow moving filter feeding shark, the largest living fish species. The largest confirmed individual had a length of 12.65 meters (41.50 ft) and a weight of more than 21.5 tones, but unconfirmed claims report considerably larger whale sharks. The shark is found in tropical and warm oceans, lives in the open sea with a lifespan of about 70 years. The species originated about 60 million years ago. Although whale sharks have very large mouths, they feed mainly, though not exclusively, on plankton, microscopic plants and animals, although the BBC program Planet Earth filmed a whale shark feeding on a school of small fish. The skin of the whale shark is that of the thickest of any living creature and can reach 15cm thick along the dorsal.
In Africa, the names for the whale shark are very evocative: "papa shillingi" in Kenya came from the myth that God threw shillings upon the shark which are now its spots. In Madagascar the name is "marokintana" meaning "many stars".
The dive was amazing the spotter plane found a 4 meter long shark and the crew rushed to the muster stations and we set a course for the circling plane and the mounting number of boats that were sending people in to dive with the shark. Australian law prevents no more than 10 people diving with the shark at any time and it restricts the distance from the aquatic beast….no riding its fin’s like Sea Biscuit for me then. I was quite surprised there were no Japanese tourists on the dive as I am quite sure they would try and use some part of its body to rejuvenate their sexual libido and gain immortality or just jump into the water thinking it was a huge ‘Yo Sushi!’ restaurant but alas there were mainly only Australians and English. Snorkelling with the sharks was an amazing experience that I will never forget or most likely get to do again but it was not quite as incredible as some tourists have made out and this could be due to the size of the shark we swam with, at 4 meters long its not the biggest when compared to the largest ever recorded (18 meters) and with other tourists talking of seeing 8 or 9 meter long sharks this leaves quite a bitter taste. When the plane/boat spots the shark there is a frenzy not from the shark but from the countless numbers of tour groups and boats that populate the area spring into action and all head toward the unaware shark like some kind of Gum Ball Rally and the first band there get to dive with it first. Lucky for the tour groups the shark goes in a straight line sucking up plankton so all the boats kind of line up 30 meters or so apart so that when one group ends another begins, I can not imagine what the shark thinks of this all….if I come back as a whale shark I will attack.









Driving along the West Coast as much like with all of Australia the flies are a major problem and especially so when you head out of the city and into the bush. The flies will land anywhere on your body but generally the face its like they know what will really piss you off, I have had flies try and land and take the moisture from my eyeballs and even go in my ear to depths that a Q-tip would be jealous and all the while you are batting them away they buzz off for 2 seconds then land in exactly the same spot, this wave like motion that you continue until you get back in the car or walk into a spider web is called the Australian wave. This was much the case around the cape and generally everywhere we went it made me think that I was not in WA but Western Africa then I think to myself if only as I would be knee deep in World Cup fever; face paint, steel drum, WAGS, Uri Geller, England fourth favourite even though we will never get past the quarters, Rooney’s inevitable red card, the British public and media backlash against Rooney, Terry’s missed penalty, Pizza Hut’s obligatory advert with Terry crying god I will miss it all. I shed a tear as I write this as it is going to be extremely hard almost impossible to see the world cup due to the time distance and the licensing laws here…….next story line for Mission Impossible 4, I don’t think even Tom Cruise could abseil knife in mouth into some Australian bar and get them to switch it from Australian Rules Football to Soccer (Football)….sob sob. After that little cry I will get back to the story the story of my adventures or lack there of in Australia.

Leaving Exmouth which was over priced and under styled we headed for Coral Bay which again is a small town (one street) which was over priced ($6 for 1 cucumber) and maybe over styled as being this amazing place that people could stay for weeks on end, sure the beach was picture perfect and the water was crystal clear with a sublime aqua marine colour but these beaches are now a dime a dozen on my trip, seeing these crop up all the time in my pictures much like an annoying friend at a party who wants to be in every picture. We spent a day on the beach playing football - used in its most loose term due to Jess and mines ability although it was hot and I do have a cut on my foot, sunbathing and snorkelling and in the evening we headed for a few pints and a burger to treat ourselves to a hard days relaxing. Maybe with hindsight on my side we should have soaked up a few more days there as the weather with every kilometre driving south the weather has started heading ‘south’.

Camping is becoming very expensive with them charging up to $15 per person to sleep on the ground even if we share a tent and some places like Queensland they try and charge us for two pitches not together to put two tents up so we always say there are only two of us and we basically sneak Sal in but in the long run it has saved 14 x $15 give or take. I am sure we will get caught at some point but Sal will be our ‘hitchhiker’ friend we picked up who is not staying here. There are other things us backpackers do to save the odd buck here and there but for people who have not been there and done it it may seem……..well…..odd.

After Coral Bay we headed to another spit of land which is known as Sharks Bay and the main attraction here apart from a psychotic camp ground employee who probably had his mothers dead body dressed in the attic using her as some sick ventriloquist dummy was Monkey Mia, another national park which because they have fed dolphins so much at the shore line they come back every morning to feed and this brings us, the tourists, in great numbers. I was not impressed by this circus act at all, all they have basically done is make a wild animal extremely lazy and you may say the same about Playstaion 3 and me but these animals are not out looking for food as the fat lady in the water is feeding them and they come in numbers ranging from 4- 19 “depending on how many mates they tell” was the description from the employee with the microphone. I would much prefer to swim with dolphins in the real wild albeit I probably would soil myself thinking the fin was a shark but with this money making scheme I did not enter the water or beg like some people to feed them. Don’t be disheartened though as there was something there that I did like and whilst everyone was looking left I was looking right and caught the most amazing sun rise and got to hangout with an animal I had not seen in the wild or in captivity before…….the Pelican. At first I was quite anxious around it as memories of a kid with geese chasing me wings flapping and beaks pecking flashed in my thought box but as I neared closer the pelican couldn’t give a hoot that I was practically in his personal space taking picture upon picture from every different angle and at one point I almost got the impression that the pelican was doing poses on purpose.

From Sharks Bay we were on the path towards Perth but we wanted to see Kalibarry Nartional park along a slight detour, well more 150 km out of our way and it was not worth it. I am starting to think that Australia just name any patch of land a national park as long as it has one gorge, one billabong (waterhole) and/or a waterfall then the request bill heads off to Canberra (Australia’s capital) and they give it some wishy washy name…..Wishy Washy National Park and charge people to enter, in my view there should be some valuing system, take my favourite – Karijini set that as the bar and rate everything against that and this will save people time and more importantly money. Thank God that we didn’t pay for this one. I think it is because Australia is so big they do this and to describe to you exactly how big this area is I will not tell you the area in miles square or hectares or even tell you how many times England can fit into this country instead I will tell you a story:

I have recently discovered by way of extensive reading that on May 28, 1993, a large seismic disturbance occurred in Western Australia, Australia tripped sensors across the globe scientists were baffled I may be wrong but in the place where this ‘earthquake’ happened there are no fault lines so earthquake was not an option, the scientists went back to researching why three buses come at once and why sick days are mostly taken on Mondays or Fridays. It was 4 years later that the Australia worked out that this ‘seismic disturbance’ was likely a nuclear bomb test by a terrorist group from Japan known as Aum Shinrikyo, you may remember this group as the ones who let of the sarin gas in the Tokyo underground, on top of this it was later discovered that Aum owned a large plot of land near the epicenter. Witnesses around the area (truckers and campers) saw a bright flash of light "like a far off explosion". Now process this; Australia is so big it takes 4 years to realise that a nuclear bomb explosion has occurred in their own country…..Imagine this in the UK, ok ok in Slough we probably would not notice but anywhere else it would make headlines around the world and this leads me on to make a note that when do we ever hear about Australian news/politics/gossip/science/sport anything in fact well unless we beat them in the Ashes test like last summer then we hear all about it in England but compare this to the other side of the Atlantic we get to hear if Obama sneezes and sometimes that will make headlines, on the other hand some of Australia’s news is quite laughable and is suprising it makes it into Australian papers, for example when in the Northern Territories not quite remembering where but I spied a paper not local but a major NT paper and the headline was

‘HORNY ROO STALKS NORTHERN TERRITORY WOMEN’

It had a picture of a kangaroo I don’t think it was the kangaroo in question but I feared looking inside incase of them printing an e-fit which would likely have made me lose all bowl and urinal control. I guess that answers my question we don’t hear about Australia because nothing of world importance happens here and even when it does Australians forget about it too like when they lost a prime minister one day he dived into the swell of the ocean never to be seen again, why couldn’t England have that luck with Gordon ‘The Gofer’ Brown the Thames was on his doorstep.

At the moment I am half a days drive from Perth, not too sure what to expect from this city apart from weather wise as everyone has been telling us its cold but Australian cold and English cold are two very very different beasts, I wont crack out the thermal underwear quite yet.



*Emo kids – for those readers who do not have a clue these are teenagers who listen to punky rocky American bands where they think that the words about killing themselves and being unhappy are emotionally fitting to their current life. Bands include – My Chemical Romance, Panic! At the Disco, Fall Out Boy so get to the Apple store online and hit them up but leave the rusty razor blade in the draw guys!