Life down under (water)

Haven't had chance to write anything for a while as I've been camping instead of staying in hostels, so its been more difficult to get online. But, I'm still travelling down the west coast of Australia, should be in Perth in a few days time.

From Broome I travelled south and inland a bit to the Karajini national park. Stayed at a good bush campsite here and had a nice walk along a river gorge. This was perfect as whenever it got too hot there were good places to go for a swim, so probably spent as much time in the water as walking.

From there I went back to the coast to stay at Exmouth. this is a nice little town where I spent a few days. Had very nice beaches with a coral reef not far from the shore, so just swimming from the beach you could see loads of fish. From the beach you could also see humpback whales swimming down the coast. The highlight of my stay here was a trip out on a glass bottomed boat over the coral reef. On the way to the reef a pair of whales swam right past the bat, and the water was only a few meters deep so you could see them really clearly. Went snorkelling at the reef, and his was amazing as i'd never done anything like that before. Saw loads of different types of coral and an incredible variety of fish. SO after that I went and brought a mask and snorkel and have been using it a lot.

After Exmouth I have just been continuing down the coast stopping at Coral Bay, Carnarvon, Denham and Kalbarri and basically spending a lot of time at the beach. While in Denham I went on a day trip to the Francois Peron National Park, this was really good, a very scenic and unspoilt part of the coast where they are trying to reintroduce endangered native Australian species. Most of them are nocturnal so didn't actually see any, but from one point on the coast I did see sharks, dolphins, turtles, sea snakes and huge rays.

Now I am in Geraldton, still enjoying the coast and beaches. I've never really had a beach holidy before so I guess this has been a good place to do it.