The Whale Shark!!

A lion fish I saw when diving - very cool!!

Well hello Mr Angle Fish

The turtle we saw at Coral Bay

Coral Bay to Broome

Well I left Monkey Mia and we drove all day to Coral Bay. I met two girls on the bus - Marisa and Kelly, who have been unsuccessful in ditching me for the last couple of weeks. (For those of you who remember me - especially my 5.30pm university hyper hour - then you will understand when Marisa says that she has 'never met anyone more hyper and nutsoid than herself' (nutsoid is her own word btw!)) Anyway, we arrived just in time for a pizza dinner and a few beers. The problem with the west coast is that it is a lot quieter than the east coast and far fewer people live here. Therefore everything closes a lot earlier. For example the only pub in town (which was actually at the resort as no separate pub existed) closed at 11pm - this was late as it was a Friday night!! Anyway, the next morning after little sleep as I was sharing a dorm with 9 other people (oh the joy of backpacking!!), we decided to spend most of the day at the beach as there was, to be honest, absolutely nothing else to do in Coral Bay!! The 'town' (although I would call it a village) consisted of one road with everything on it - a supermarket (the size of a small newsagents) which also doubled up at the post office, a dive shop, couple of restaurants and a petrol station - how exciting!! So the beach it was. We went for a snorkel as the reef was literally a few metres from the beach. We saw lots of stuff, including a turtle, sting rays, starfish, angel fish and on our second day a shovel nose shark.
So we spent 2 days at Coral Bay, snorkeling and on the beach and as there wasn't much else to do we decided to move onto Exmouth.
Exmouth was slightly bigger than Coral Bay but not by much. They have one nightclub which apparently is only open on Friday - unfortunately we missed this one day of excitement:-( On the first day there I got up very early and went diving three times and saw huge black tip reef sharks, and loads of other cool fish including lots of nemos. The second day we went on a boat to hopefully find Whale Sharks -these are the largest fish in the ocean. We started with a snorkel to make sure we could all swim, then just as we were getting out of the water, we were notified that the spotter plane had spotted a whale shark - yeahhhhhhhhh. So, our boat raced across the water - so fast that we were the first to arrive (there were 3 other boats to follow). Therefore this meant that we were the first to swim with this whale shark. Kelly, Marisa and I were in the second group (only 10 people are allowed to be in the water with the shark at any one time - we had 20 people on our boat). I have to say that I really didn't know what to expect, the skipper shouted to us, 'jump jump jump'. So we lepted into the water and followed the guide. I will never forget first laying eyes on this amazing creature. It was definitely very big - but only a baby by whale shark standards. Because, it was young, then it was interested in us as it had never encountered humans before, therefore instead of swimming off which is what they tend to do, he just kept on circling around us. In total we managed to swim with him 3 times and I got loads of cool photos, which I promise to put on the site soon. I have to say that that was definitely one of the highlights of the west coast - it was truly amazing :-)
After Exmouth, we got back on the bus and spent the next three days driving to Broome, We didn't stop much on the way as we had a lot of ground to cover, plus the scenery was pretty much the same - red dust everywhere!! The first night we stayed at a campsite in Karijini region (the outback). I have to say that it was bl**dy freezing and I had my sleeping bag and three blankets - some people only had the blankets!! On top of that, when we arrived we were assured that there was a new restaurant nearby where we could drown our sorrows,and forget about the cold, bugs and other nasty aussie creatures. Well we soon found that that was not the case! As we were in aboriginal territory, that no licence had been granted and therefore no alcohol for miles - brilliant!! So we went to bed early, wishing for morning to come round quickly!! The second day we went for a walk around the beautiful gorges, then we set off on the road again - I have to say we were getting a little frustrated with sitting around all day, but there was little we could do about that!! But to add to the excitement, our front, right tire blew while we were driving along a road in the middle of nowhere. Our driver handled it very well, especially since he had to control the trailer as well (the people I went diving with in Exmouth had lost one of their vans 2 days before, because a tire blew and the van flipped because it had a trailer). So we spent over 30 mins fixing the tire, because the company neglected to provide a jack that actually worked!! But eventually we managed to change tires and we were on our way again. Due to this setback we arrived late at the place we were spending the night - Paradoo Station (a station in Australia is a massive farm - like well over a thousand plus acres!). We spent less than 12 hours here, so nothing exciting happened. We got up early, and started our last day of driving to Broome - yeahhh. This was a pretty, uneventful drive. We drove through the great sandy desert which really wasn't that sandy. Apparently they had had a cyclone through the region a month or so ago which had brought a lot of rain so the area was in fact quite green!!
So this afternoon we arrived in Broome, which is actually very hot and humid, and once again I'm sharing a dorm with 9 others - yeah!!

Monkey Mia

Well after Kalbarri, I hopped back onto the Easyrider bus (my transport to Broome) and made my way to Monkey Mia, after spending a night in Denham. There is only one reason to go to Monkey Mia - and for those of you who don't know - it's for the Dolphins!! They come right up to shore to be fed three times a day by the waiting public. I was spending the night there, so I was around for at least 5 feeds. We got off the bus and were happily walking towards the beach when we say that the dolphins were already there, so we legged it over and began snapping. You stand ankle deep in the water and the dolphins are so close - I finally have photos of dolphins - yeah!!! There were also 3 babies, who were adorable and came really close. Once the feeding was over we decided to have a quick walk around the resort to see what it was like, but within 15 minutes the dolphins were back for another feed - they were obviously hungry!! So we rushed back over and this time I got to feed a dolphin called Shock a piece of fish. It was soooo cool. The dolphins proceeded to come back another 3 times that day. The next day they came in again for their feeding and this time I fed a dolphin called Puk.
After all the feeding, I was just wandering around, when I bumped into Cornelia and Ross (they were staying at the Big River Ranch in Kalbarri). Ross (who is a pilot and the one who had flown me around the islands a couple days before) had flown some other customers up to Monkey Mia and Cornelia came as well. So I spent a couple of hours with them before I had to jump back on the bus and head up the coast to Coral Bay.

Kalbarri

Hi Everyone, I have been spending the last two weeks in a little place (although it is bigger than most of the other places I have been in the last month!!) on the west coast of Australia, called Kalbarri. Here I have been working on a horse ranch called the Big River Ranch. I have been having a great time riding everyday and helping with the horses, and then having a swim in the afternoons - it has been a tough life. Luckily there haven't been too many nasty creatures around - just tons of mosquitos. Although the girl I am working with, Cornelia from Sweden started screaming at me yesterday - 'Sara, Sara - there is a snake over here - ahhhhhh'. So I walk over - not overly keen on coming face to face with this snake. I figured that with all the noise she is making that it must be at least 10 foot long!! I get there to find that it is about 7 inches long and only a baby. Anyway, as Cornelia is terrified, I go off and find a shovel and then start jabbing at it, hoping to somehow kill it. Eventually my efforts pay off and I kill the thing. It was pretty cool though - yellow and black stripes - apparently pretty deadly when fully grown!! I have to say that I feel I am becoming pretty hardcore with all this 'animal control' I am practicing!! Although, I don't think I'm ready yet if I come face to face with a fully grown snake!! I also went up in a plane today to see some of the coastline and gorges in the area which was pretty cool. Although the plane was very small and you could feel every bump - nice!
I would also at this point like to thank my family for the early morning calls I have had the last two mornings. I really appreciated being woken up so early by lots of noise and screaming - thanks!! I will get my own back!! But it was good to hear from you, despite my lack of sleep - hope you enjoyed the bank holiday weekend!!
Anyway, there isn't much else to report as all I have been doing is looking after horses. Tomorrow I head furthur up the coast to hopefully see dolphins and sharks - yeah!!