Roebourne to Geraldton - Smithsdownunder

Details: Category: Kimberley 2011

We had a few days in hand when we arrived in Exmouth so we camped in Yardie Homestead before moving into Cape Range National Park where we had booked a camp site. It took ages to get rid of all the dust we had collected at Barradale!

The corellas were having problems sitting on the electric cables in the camp site.

Cape Range is right on the edge of the Ningaloo Reef and we managed to get into the camp site we had stayed in a few times before. We could walk from our tent over the white sand dune to the coral reef.

We had a visitor whilst sat on the beach one day. I thought it was the highly venomous King Brown so we gave it plenty of space!

Josie took some good underwater photos on the reef.

You can find a few more pictures at the bottom of the page.

Everybody enjoys snorkelling on the reef!

We visited Charles Knife Canyon where Ali thought about trying her hand at base jumping.

Just along the road from the camp site there was a small canyon with several families of rock wallabies. We got up early one morning and hiked into the canyon and saw several wallabies.

Whilst in the canyon it started to rain, the first rain we had seen since leaving Exmouth three months before. We got drenched. The next day the weather was still bad as we were packing up to move on to Carnarvon.

This road train full of cattle was also heading south.

We spent a night in Carnarvon and then on to Geraldton the next day. We had all read the book telling the story of the Dutch East India Company ship 'Batavia' which foundered on a reef about 60km offshore from Geraldton and we decided to take a flight out the Houtman Abrolhos Islands where it all took place.

There are 122 islands in three groups spread over about 100km. The islands lie in the stream of the warm Leeuwin Current which keeps the water temperature between 20 and 22 deg throughout the year. The larger islands are used as bases for pearl farming and crayfish fishing.

The coral reefs looked magnificent from the air.

After dropping off a couple of people on Rat Island we had the aircraft to ourselves and went on to land at East Wallabi Island where we went snorkelling and looking at the wildlife.

This is Morning Reef where the Batavia foundered in 1629.

The photo below is the fort that was built by Wiebbe Hayes on West Wallabi Island. Who is Willie Hayes I hear you ask! Read the book, it's a amazing part of Australian history. Batavia by Peter Fitzsimonds (ISBN 978-1-86471-040-3).

Here are some more of Josie's underwater pictures.