I really don’t have any expectations for the cruise today. It’s never occurred to me to swim with any animal marine animal, the whole thing is an adventure with no risk – if we don’t find a whale shark, I’ll have a boat ride on these beautiful waters.

The boat ramp is quite close to our campsite. While we wait for the bus of people from Exmouth we get chatting to some other people who are on the cruise too. And as usual they’re from the east coast, this time it’s a family from Nelson Bay! So we compare notes on our trip so far, and escaping from the lockdown at home in NSW. The bus arrives and we board the boat.

On board, the water is clear to the sand below and sparkling with shafts of sunlight. We’re given a safety briefing and fitted for snorkels and fins.

We head into deeper water for a practice in the gear. Getting back onto the boat is a trick of timing, and I’m glad to watch others before jumping back aboard. As we’re getting back in, the captain says that the light aeroplane has spotted a whale shark, and we set off to intercept it.

The instructors explained how we’d be swimming with the whale sharks: our photographer would enter the water first and swim alongside the shark, signalling its direction; then half the swimmers would be dropped into the water ahead of the shark and one instructor would get them to form a line; as the shark swam by the group would begin swimming parallel to the path of the shark. As the group tired they would re-form. Meanwhile the boat would drive the other half of the swimmers further ahead of the shark and they would form a line in the water; then the boat would continuously leap-frog one group ahead of the other. Some aspects of this were easier said than done, others were the converse!

As we approached the whale group 1 was sitting on the back of the boat while we (in group 2) waited and watched. In an excited confusion the group disappeared into the water and the boat set off further in front. And quickly we were in the water too, about 100 metres ahead of the whale. The first group stopped swimming and formed a group.

The water was colder here and the instructor was urgently trying to form us into a line so we weren’t directly in front of the shark. I was nervously shivering as the instructor told us to look under the surface to see the approaching whale shark. It was hard to see at first, but a distant shadow rapidly became a giant animal gliding and flexing towards us! As its eye came alongside we started swimming, and I was suddenly surrounded by a mass of flippers, bubbles and arms – and somewhere a whale!

After a minute I took up a position directly behind the whale, feeling the huge surge of water thrown back by its sweeping tail. That alone we great fun to appreciate. The wide, dotted body cut an effortless path through the ocean, casting a long dark shadow far below.

Our instructor called us to stop swimming, we reformed the group and clambered back on to the boat. So (a) following instructions: easier done that said (or explained, at least); and (b) swimming alongside whale shark: easier said than done!

But our second and the third swims became far easier. The group knew what to expect and how to arrange ourselves. The instructor also told Anna and me to swim onto the other side of the whale shark because we were fast enough swimmers, and that would get us away from the group. This proved very good advice.

Just like the snorkelling in Coral Bay, the subsequent swims became more peaceful and gave me time to appreciate what I was witnessing first-hand: the mesmerising gentleness of this great animal.

I cooked a steak for dinner. Some fat collected on the stove and caught fire (the steak was done cooking by then anyway). As I was taking the steak off the stove and serving, one of the other other campers ran in with his fire extinguisher at the ready, pin pulled and nozzle pointing at dinner! I was really shocked by his sudden appearance and asked him to kindly not spray foam on my food. He grew rapidly embarrassed and quite defensively told me he was the safety officer at an industrial site so he was right to make sure no fire took hold of the camp (I suppose the fact it was mostly sand and rock hadn’t occurred to him…). When he got back to his camp and we started eating we heard his wife say, “You didn’t run over with a fire extinguisher did you? Not again!?”

North from Coral Bay, on the western side of Cape Range are a series of campgrounds. They have no running water, most don’t have facilities at all, but they are along an amazing coast. It’s really a continuation of the Coral Bay environment. We’ll head here for the next four days.

But before leaving Coral Bay, there’s a shark nursery that fills up with baby sharks at certain times of day. Apparently we’re at the wrong time of day, because as beautiful as the bay is, there aren’t any sharks in sight! Never mind…

Driving back north, we stop into Exmouth to stock up on food and water. And to book a whale shark tour. Some friends recommended a particular tour group to us so we book with them in a couple of days’ time. But we are here out of the season and we have heard that were whale sharks about yesterday. So to double our chances, and feeling a little urgent, we book a second tour for tomorrow (!)

With Donna loaded for four days of supplies we set off around the peninsula. It take nearly two hours, driving north around the lighthouse and then back south through low lying windswept grasslands. We pass the visitor centre and then the boat ramp and various water-access roads. Eventually we reach our campground with just enough time to setup and walk up the dune behind us in time to watch the sunset with a glass of wine.

From Karijini we head back to the coast, to Coral Bay. It’s a six hour drive, and reasonably uninteresting, though I’m sure if we were going slower there’d be plenty to see along the way. We arrive in time to setup camp in the sandy ground and head to the visitors centre before it closes.

I was surprised when the visitor centre guy said we could just snorkel off the beach, I suppose I expected to need a boat to reach the reef.

Earlier in Broome, in preparation for this part of the trip, we bought snorkels and an underwater camera. I wasn’t sure how much we’d use them, but figured it would be worth it if we ended up needing them.

After the visitor centre we walked up a sand dune which overlooks the bay. Looking from there, the water in the bay is luminescent blue, dark patches with rippling waves indicating the reef below. Children are playing around the edge of the bay, where sunlight cuts through the water to the bright white sand.

We get dinner at a pub and an early night to give us plenty of water time tomorrow.

I tried to get a good seal on the snorkel with my holiday beard, but alas I cannot. And so off it comes, what a shame! (Turns out vasso would have helped here, but I didn’t think about it…)

Once we’re in the water we take a few moments to get used to the gear before heading deeper. About 10 meters from shore we encounter our first coral formations. The chirping of fish pecking at the coral grows louder.

As the current gently draws us north into the bay, I begin to feel a deep peace come over me. The reef is an otherworldly city full of activity and a kind of ordered chaos with intersecting layers of fish-highways.

The coral is in shapes new to me. There is coral like giant cabbage with overlapping green leaves, yellow coral like fronds of fungi, coral shaped like a cross between a brain and a golf ball (with round wrinkles, not long wrinkles), coral like outstretched tentacles with blue tips, there’s a field of purple coral like flowers on dead tree branches.

Tiny fish dart and hide deep in the coral as we drift over them, larger fish ignore us and continue on.

When we eventually exit the water an hour later I realise how cold I had become, but I hadn’t noticed while I was snorkelling. The hot sun rapidly brings heat back to my skin.

We repeat the loop three more times, walking back along the beach and snorkelling into the bay. Each time there are new things to explore, though each time the cold returns faster.

The combination of the scrambling, playful exploring of Karijini and the alien underwater peace of Coral Bay has really peaked my joyful holiday feeling.

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If yesterday’s horizontal strata needed an antidote, then Hammersley Gorge is it! Here the strata is immediately visible but utterly warped, folded and wrenched into incredible shapes. The drama of the events which created these shapes is quite unimaginable.

It’s another long drive to get to the gorge today, this time on about 50km of dirt road. The first 47km or so is on a Rio Tinto access road, and it’s one of the best dirt roads of the trip. But the final 3km is maintained by the government and it’s the worst dirt road of the trip! And so we crawled the last way, winding down to the carpark.

I am immediately struck by the colours. The rock is somehow even more red here, and the sky is bright deep blue with crisp curling white clouds. Then folds in the rock come into focus, crazy mind bending lines set into this iron-hard rock.

The walls are like a work of art and I sit to take them in. The form and story of these billion-year-old rocks brings me great wonder. I think of long hours spent in art galleries, and the works which force me to stop and then demand my time and attention before they release me from their spell. These walls arrest me in the same way.

When the spell has waned we head upstream. The water runs through fins that jut into the stream from either side. We hop between fins until the steepness becomes difficult. There’s a pool up this end which is really cool, but we now have a choice: climb up and down the fins (sharp and slippery), or swim in the water up to the pool. We strip to our swimmers and jump in. It’s not as cold as yesterday, and much much easier to get up stream.

At the pool we slowly, gently ease ourselves out of the water. The edge is very slippery and the rock is hard. The pool is known as Spa Pool, and though I’ve seen photos of it, it’s far more amazing in person. It’s more like a movie set than an natural pool. At the back is a waterfall, a vertical steam of white; the body of the pool is bright bright green, lit by the sun, with rays cutting through the water to the bottom; the sides of the pool bellow out and encapsulate the water, they also rise up high over the pool, creating a snug sheltered isolated calm. The rock walls draw the eye around the pool to the waterfall and then down into the cool water and back again – once clockwise, now anticlockwise.

We spend a little time in the pool and then climb further up its walls to look at the reverse angle. From here we can see the gorge running long away into a narrow stream caught between very high walls.

We swim back down to the centre of the gorge, where we came in, and then walk around some rock ledges before swimming further down into the narrow stream.

Here the sounds echo far up above us as we swim. The water is cool, but the sun above beats down and keeps us warm. The narrow passage lock us in for a few hundred metres, before it opens out a little to hills rising either side. Now one side becomes sheer again while the other is forested and green. The shadowy cover of trees is cooling. The stream becomes shallower and more rocky, and then disappears into many small streams between thick trees. We rest here for a while before starting to get cold.

One our way back I clamber up on side to take some photos right along the narrow passage (Anna for scale).

Once again, the ancient rock, incredible colours, adventure and joy of exploration has made today very special.

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There are a few gorges to check out today, so we start pretty early. We’re spending today near the Dales Campground, tomorrow we’re driving a little further to get to the north of the park. Even though these are close to Tom Price, the drive is still about 1.5 hours each way.

The rocks in Karijini are about 2.2-2.8 billion years old, about half the age of the earth. Much of the strata still lies in the horizontal planes as it was originally deposited (notable exception on tomorrow’s hike!). This areas supplies 40% of the worlds demand for iron ore – it’s very red here.

Our first walk is to Joffre Falls. We set off around the rim, looking down into the amphitheatre below. White gums dot the red landscape, casting long shadows in the morning light. Recently stairs have been installed for the climb into the gorge, I can see the fun of having to clamber down one big boulder at a time. The edges of the rock are cut straight and hard, creating a path like giant boxes piled into the corner of a room. The stairs/ladders make the climb more reliable, particularly as they’ll get wetter with more people heading back up again during the day.

At the bottom there is a pool of water which is nipped off at both ends where the gorge walls come closer together. We head right at first to look into the the amphitheatre we saw from the top. A shallow pool and the hard rock walls make for a fun echo chamber. But the real fun is back the other way.

There is just one other couple exploring. They tell us that they saw people further down the gorge when they stopped here briefly yesterday. We carefully wade through the first pool over to the next chamber. The water is about waist-deep and the bottom very slippery, so we’re sliding/skating our feet as we go. I climb up one side of the wall to see what the next chamber looks like while the other couple make their way to the other wall to look from that angle.

It’s clear that my side isn’t the right way down – there’s a single sheer drop down into the water – but it’s about a 5 metre drop. But from here I can direct the other couple with hand and foot hold to carefully clamber down by the waterfall and along a wall, down to the water below. I stay to give Anna the same encouragement and then set over there myself. Moving slowly over the slippery rock and along the wall to the dry parts, the climb down is pretty simple. There’s a small channel of flowing water which opens into a bowl and then a river. There’s no graceful way to get into the bowl but to slide/jump into the water.

It’s pretty cold! And in turn all four of us exclaim as we jump into the water, scrambling for the warmth of a warm rock shelf to recover our breath.

There water is clear and brightly green against the rusty-red-grey rock of the gorge walls. Each strata is worn and knobbly, creating shelves for trees to take hold, and for us to climb onto as we explore this level of water. As we’re playing here we get talking to the other couple. And wouldn’t you know it, they’re from Warners Bay! We compare notes on who we know and places we’ve been – consistently finding things in common. In the end we spend nearly an hour just hanging out down there.

As we’re ready to leave some other people begin figuring out how to get down. We give them a hand before heading back up for a quick snack. Our new found friends give us their business-come-holiday-card to ring them when we’re back and then depart.

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Mid-morning we head over to Dales Gorge. This is a much larger gorge than Joffre, wider, higher and longer. The same white gums line the top rim of the gorge and the very defined rock strata is also present. One of the new features here is asbestos. Naturally occurring blue asbestos is present in some areas of this gorge and I’m really curious to see it.

We walk a few kilometres along the top of the gorge before descending on rock stairs. There has been a major rock fall over one of the popular spots (Circular Pool) and the track is closed in that direction. I understand that the rock presents a crush risk, but also that lots of asbestos was disturbed and they have to make that safe too. So we head around to our right at the bottom.

Keeping our eyes open as we walk, Anna is the first to spot some asbestos layers in the rock. It’s fibrous and grey-blue, quite pretty against the other rust-red layers (though the camera doesn’t really do it justice). Once we’ve seen it once we begin so see it everywhere. In more obvious places it’s clear that people have scraped at it, we are not so bold (i.e. stupid).

A few bends later and we have to clamber over a rock fall. The rocks have broken into perfect slabs, full of right-angles and straight lines. It’s quite unnatural looking, almost already taking on the human-made forms that the iron ore is made into.

We wind through the gorge, in parts it is soften by green forest; elsewhere it is a harsh combination of water and hard rock. When the water runs higher we tiptoe on small ledges to stay dry. Quite suddenly the gorge opens right up to a big pool and an tiered-seating-like rock formation looking down on us. It’s early afternoon and about 20 groups of people and spread out looking down to the pool below them. We cross the water on a narrow path and climb as past the groups. This is Fortescue Falls.

We have now walked in a big loop back to where we started. There are access stairs from here straight to the carpark above. But before we finish walking, we head a little further along the gorge.

Fern Pool is about another five minute’s walk and presents a shadier place to cool off and eat some lunch. Here we change into swimmers and float about in the tree-covered waters before taking lunch.

Refreshed and rehydrated we set back to Fortescue Falls for another swim and some time to dry off in the hot sun.

Karijini’s reputation really makes sense to me now, it has been so much fun playing and exploring the gorges!

 [Click on a photo to open a full-screen slide show]