Since we started this trip, we've been saying how incredibly lucky we are to be experiencing the things that we are. During the last week, since we left Perth and began our journey up the west coast, we have been pinching ourselves almost constantly. It has been the most incredible week, one that will stand out when we look back on this trip even amongst all of the other amazing weeks that we've had.

We boarded the Greyhound bus an hour later than scheduled due to "technical difficulties" but were soon placated by the comedy duo bus drivers taking us up to Kalbarri! In actual fact the 7 hour trip went very quickly - aided by the films they showed on the way and the friendship we'd struck up with an Israeli guy called Lior! We got into Kalbarri at about 5.30pm and were shown to our great little cabin - our home for the next two days.

On Tuesday we hired bikes from the "family entertainment centre" and rode out along the coastal national park stopping first at red bluff wherewe could ride out on a red rock outcrop right up to the sea. After finding a bit more of a bike track we were forced to hit the road - i.e. with cars - something Chelle hasn't ever really done since failing her cycling proficiency test!!! She soon got used to the cars whizzing by her and after a quick refresher course on right turn indicating she was away! Our next stop was Rainbow Valley for some lunch. Now on the road we were in a position to appreciate the amount of dead wildlife a typical Aussie highway accomodates, including a dead snake, several different shapes and sizes of bones and a kangaroo skull! We stopped further on at Eagle Gorge, Shellhouse Grandstand and finally ended up 16kms down the road at Island Rock and Natural Bridge. The whole coastline was very rugged and reminded us of some of the limestone coast in Victoria. As we started on the long cycle home Chelle had a bit of an accident and grazed her foot on the bike pedal. Luckily she soldiered on through the pain so we didn't have to walk back!

The following day we went sandboarding. We met our guides Jez and Rob and then boarded our 4WD bus, which was full of kids! There was only one other adult there and she was shaperone! We immediately felt ridiculous. After some scary dune driving in the 4WD bus up and down some massively steep dunes we reached the first practice dune. Standing at the back of the class looking like the remedials who had been kept back for far too long, we watched Jez go through the basics and then it was our turn. As we were only sitting or lying on the board at this point it was pretty easy to pick up (only the kid with thick glasses and plasters on his arm and chin was falling off) so Jez spiced things up by introducing Chelle and me to the "honeymoon" position! We then made our way to the biggest dune of the day - the Superbowl! You could get up to some great speeds on this massively high, incredibly steep dune so it was great fun. Worryingly at one point quite a few of the kids started copying the honeymoon position but their shaperone didn't seem to mind and even Jez, who I'm sure was initially imaging a load of irate parents knocking on his door the next day started to see the funny side! After conquering the Superbowl
and taking a break to do a bit of snorkelling in the lagoon, Jez took us to a shallower dune so we could try our hand at standing on the board. In the same annoying way she took to surfing, Chelle was standing on her first go all the way down the dune whilst I spent most of my time tumbling down it along with the kid with glasses and plasters on every joint! By the end though I'd got the hang of it and we made our way back to town very happy with a new adventure sport under our belts. We then boarded our shuttle bus that would take us to our Greyhound coach and on to Denham in Shark Bay.

Our original plan had been to hire a car on Thursday to take us round the Shark Bay Heritage trail but after spending about an hour in the morning trying to find the car hire office (everyone had a number for them but despite Denham only being one street about 500m long, no-one could tell us where their office was!) we found that we could do a guided tour on a minibus for about the same price, so we joined our tour guide Jenny and two Americans for a trip around Shark Bay. I have to say Jenny wasn't the most inspiring tour guide we've met but luckily Chelle and I had some appreciation of what we were about to see. To put Shark Bay into perspective, it is in the top 20 of World Heritage sites, ticking all four World Heritage boxes of outstanding marine life, coastal waters, flora and fauna and geology; and shares this exclusive position with some real heavyweights including the Great Barrier Reef, the Rocky Mountains and the Grand Canyon. After a brief encounter with an emu walking down the main street in Denham, our first stop was Eagle Bluff to try to spot some of the marine life that inhabits this shallow bay including rays, turtles, sharks and the occasional dugong (or 'underwater cow'). Unfortunately we came up short on three of these but did get to see some graceful rays flying about in the water. We then went down to Hamelin Pool to view the Stromatolites. Now to all intents and purposes these are just rocks with a layer of bacteria over the top sitting in shallow, very salty water. However, anyone who's read Bill Bryson will understand the significance of these rocks, which are actuallly alive performing a photosynthetic-esque process to create oxygen. Whilst the stromatolites in Shark Bay are only a few thousand years old, their ancestors date back around 3.5 BILLION years, making them the oldest living organism alive today. Couple this with the fact that it was these guys who were responsible for initially pumping 20% of the earth's oxygen into the atmosphere, allowing other life to flourish and you can start to comprehend the significance of what we've been lucky enough to experience. We've seen the organisms that are scientifically believed to have kick-started life on earth. I never thought geology would blow me away! After this, we went to see a shell rock quarry, where bricks of this peculiar compacted shell material were cut to build some of Denhams early buildings, including the town's tiny church. Being full of tiny air pockets within the shells this rock is made out of - this stuff is as good an insulator as any modern man-made building material. We then travelled on to Shell Beach which is made up of tiny cockle and other shells. The shells are about 4-5m deep in most places and the beach stretches for just over a kilometre - very picturesque against the stunning turquoise sea. That evening we met a couple of German engineers in our hostel who are working in the north of Australia on a solar-power project and had travelled down to Shark Bay for a long weekend holiday. Andy and Martin (not very German sounding admittedly!) sat down whilst Chelle and I were having tea and made their way through two bottles of wine and a packet of crisps before inviting us to the pub! You could easily argue the folly of accompanying these guys to a pub based on their 'dinner' but throwing caution to the wind, Chelle and I decided to go. Thus ensued one of our larger nights in Australia with the very entertaining Andy and Martin - thanks guys for a great night, although your German pool rules suck!!

Now over to Chelle to continue our tale....

We were up very early on Friday in order to catch the 'shuttlebus' the 30kms or so into Monkey Mia. The shuttlebus in fact turned out to be a bloke down the road and his mate and their car! Monkey Mia is basically just a beach with a small resort built up around it. The reason everyone goes here is to see the dolphins which have been coming in to the beach to meet people almost daily since the 1960s! Initially visitors could just buy a bucket of fish to feed them, but as the popularity of the area grew, the locals realised that the process had to be controlled to ensure that the dolphins continued to hunt for their own food. So nowadays, the feeds are limited to three per day, the fish is weighed out and only female dolphins are fed. As we got on the beach, the dolphins has already arrived into shore and so they were getting ready for their first feed. The fish is brought down to the beach in buckets by volunteer workers and they then pick people one at a time from the crowd of onlookers to step forward into the water to feed a dolphin a fish. I got picked on the first feed!! Once all the fish have been eaten, the dolphins swim away again and return when they are ready for their 2nd and 3rd feed. All three feeds took place within an hour, so by 9.30am it was all over! The dolphins were beautiful and it was amazing to be so close to them. It was easy to see how intelligent they are - they knew the minute the fish was on its way down to them because they all started going crazy when the crowd was asked to take a step back out of the water. Also, once the 3rd feed was over, they knew not to bother returning to shore... much to Alex's disappointment as he'd not yet been picked to feed them! We spent the rest of the morning relaxing on the beautiful beach and again saw a couple of emus wandering around! By early afternoon we were ready to return to Denham so called our hostel to see if we could catch a lift back. Another couple of guys (different to those in the morning!) appeared about 20 minutes later in their truck to pick us up. One of the guys used to be a tour guide and did a great job of entertaining us with his knowledge of the area's Francois Peron National Park during the ride home. Although I would have enjoyed the ride a lot more if their dog, Terry, wasn't staring me out the whole way back! Once back in Denham, we treated ourselves to fish and chips in a great cafe overlooking the foreshore. We then headed back to the hostel to shower and get ourselves ready to catch the shuttlebus back to Overlander and make the onward journey via Greyhound coach to Coral Bay. We had the misfortune of sitting right at the front of the coach and had to endure the horrific sight of a kangaroo being hit, the madness of the coach having to stop in the middle of the road to let three huge cows cross, and even worse, the aussie lady in her 70s sitting behind us who talked non-stop for 5 hours. We reached Coral Bay just after midnight and couldn't be happier to be off the coach!

It's difficult to sum up how incredible Coral Bay is! It's a tiny laid-back community which stretches for little more than 150m down one side of the road, with a stunning beach almost taking the place of a pavement on the other. It's also an idyllic spot from which to enjoy Ningaloo Reef. Ningaloo Reef is Australia's largest fringing coral reef, stretching for 260kms. What makes it even more special is its close proximity to the coast - in many areas it is only 5-10m offshore, so can be accessed simply by snorkelling from the beach. The reef is brimming with fish and coral - some 250 species of coral and 500 species of fish have been recorded in the Ningaloo Marine Park which surrounds the reef. So on Saturday morning we headed straight for Paradise Beach, at the southern end of the town, where we had heard that the snorkelling was amazing. We were blown away by what we saw!! Within about 5 minutes of swimming out, we were surrounded by the most incredible fish of all shapes, sizes and of the most amazing colours. The coral was just as stunning and varied - I have never seen anything like it and doubt I ever will see anything again to rival it - it was just incredible! After some time relaxing on the beach, we went out for a second snorkel and this time went out even further to where the coral became even more colourful... wow! We stayed on the beach for the sunset - a perfect way to end the day - before heading back to our hostel for showers, food, then a few beers. The great thing about doing this leg of the journey via Greyhound is that you meet people who you then bump into again further along the journey, as everyone is making the same stops, albeit for perhaps a few more/less nights. We had bumped into Lior at our hostel - the Israeli guy that we'd met on the Greyhound when we left Perth, so joined him for a few beers at the pub (the only one in Coral Bay, which is in fact the hotel bar!)

Yesterday morning we went for a short snorkel in Bill's Bay, the main beach in Coral Bay, to get a bit more practice in before our afternoon trip. In keeping with our aim to try new things, our afternoon consisted of a quad bike snorkelling tour! We decided to share a bike, rather than take one each, so Alex was my chauffeur! Our guide led us and the one other person on the tour along the beach and across some dunes to a spot called Lagoon Bay for our first snorkel of the three hour trip. This bay is known for its turtles, but we weren't holding out much hope of seeing any. Incredibly, we saw three!! The first we only saw from a distance, the second was a huge one that just remained still and the third swam along with us... What an experience! And we were so lucky as the other lady on the trip didn't see any! Afterwards it was back on the quads and we headed to Oyster Bridge - another snorkelling spot. No turtles this time, but still some incredible fish, coral and shells. We then took the quads over some bigger dunes and were stopped by a local who had just found a Thorny Devil. Great name and you'll be able to see from the pics why it got that name! It's unique to West Australia and looks quite scary, but we held it and it just played dead! We then headed back to town, narrowly missing a kangaroo that jumped in front of our quad before it realised what it had done and made a quick change in direction! Arriving back in town we got to see all the fishermen cleaning up their catch - some huge fish - which for once we weren't tempted by because we've enjoyed seeing them in their natural environment too much! Last night we enjoyed a nice bottle of red, which we had to sneak into our room again (another hostel with a liquor license!)

Today has been spent on Paradise Beach. We went out for a couple of snorkels and spent the rest of the time relaxing. On our first snorkel, within about 5 minutes, we spotted a ray in the water and swam around with it! Incredible. We grabbed a couple of beers and rounded off the day with another sunset viewing from the beach. We're currently waiting to catch the Greyhound to make the journey to our next stop - Exmouth. The bus is due around midnight and it will take a couple of hours to get there. We're in Exmouth for 4 nights, before we then make the 19 hour onward journey to Broome!! Luckily we have a week in Broome to recover from that journey! When we next write the blog, we should have something very exciting to tell you about... we've booked to swim with Whale Sharks on Wednesday! These are the world's largest fish - they can grow up to 18 metres long!! So fingers crossed that we find some...!

Apologies for lack of photos, problems with technology again!