To see the dolphins at Monkey Mia, you have to get down to the beach at 7.45am. The whole thing is now tightly controlled ("please now move on to the beach but stay out of the water", "you can now go into the water but only up to your ankles", "please now move out of the water", "another reminder, please don't touch the dolphins", "the lady in the red jumper and the little girl with the pink beanie, please come forward and give these gold fish to Puck and Flipper...

South of Coral Bay but still fringing Ningaloo Reef is a place called Waroora Station. You can bush camp at Waroora, right on the beach. There were rays and turtles swimming right next to the shore, adjacent to our camp. It's a speccy place, only dampened slightly by the constant wind. We only had one night here but that was sufficient for Gracie to denude the beach of shells and dead coral (and fill the trailer) and for Harry to use the toilet shovel to dig a ho...

One of the best places we've been to on our trip has been Ningaloo Reef. Snorkelling over the reef, which sits a few metres off the shore at places like this at Turquoise Bay, was very memorable. Later on the day of this photo, the whole scene was topped off with a pod of dolphins idling through the bay, close to the shore, snacking on the abundant fish life. All the people on the beach started paddling out to get closer to the dolphins but they soon hurried out ...

Exmouth (and the nearby Ningaloo Reef) was a real highlight. Exmouth was just a caravan park in the 60s until Australia and the Americans built a naval communications base there. The Americans didn't hold the horses in trying to make it like home for their staff building a bowling alley, pool (replete with diving tower), gymnasium and the baseball diamond in this photo (yep.....those emus are deep in centerfield). There is still a naval communications' base but...

We drove through the Pilbara and spent a morning in the mining town of Tom Price and went on a tour of the massive open cut iron ore mine. Tom Price was originally a "closed" town open only to mine employees, when it was first established in the 60s. Apparently it was a pretty wild place, reportedly a drinking town with a mining problem. The open cut mine and the scale of the operation is quite extraordinary but it was particularly special to get up close to the...