Exmouth and Cape Range National Park – 16 to 18 May 2010

Exmouth is a relatively new town, established in 1964 to support the Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt, which uses a huge set of radio masts to provide very low frequency radio transmissions to Australian and US submarines in the Indian and Western Pacific Oceans.

It is close to nearby Cape Range National Park and the Ningaloo Marine Park

Some small towns, rather than the usual glossy brochures, provide a list of things to do in the area. Exmouth produced a list of 25 things to do in the area, with a map keyed to the 25 items.

We visited Charles Knife and Shothole Canyons, Pebble Beach, the marina and the Exmouth Fish Company (MG Kailis), allowing us to add the Big Prawn to our list of bigs. The prawns in Exmouth are totally fresh off the boats at 8.00 a.m.

The local shopping mall although small has two competing IGA supermarkets, one on each side of the street.

We drove to Cape Range National Park passing the local lighthouse point [under restoration and wrapped in plastic] and the 1907 wreck of the “SS Mildura”.

In addition to the usual National Park visitor centre, the Park provides a fascinating cruise of Yardie Creek which allows an easy exploration of Yardie Gorge. The Ranger was very knowledgeable and gave good descriptions of the wild life and geology. We saw the local community of black footed wallabies, the Osprey and Sea Eagles nests perched on the gorge walls and the more common Corella's and Egrets. Yardie Gorge is the point where tropical and temperate zones intersect, with mixed communities of red mangroves [tropical] and silver mangroves [temperate].

The Ningaloo Reef continues the full length of the North West Cape, and we stopped at a number of beaches, before snorkeling the Drift Loop in Turquoise Bay. This is a great snorkel along the inshore reef, inside the fringing reef, but the currents are strong and there is a gap in the reef. You need to be alert to return to shore at the right point so you don't wash out to sea. We swam into the current. When we had finished we allowed ourselves to drift onto shore.