Up the West Coast

Those who have been following my site might have now realised by now that I have been revamping the photos along the west coast of Australia, gallery by gallery from Perth northwards. This will include the 'Perth Surrounds' gallery (Rottnest Island, Lancelin and The Pinnacles), 'Kalbarri National Park', 'Monkey Mia', 'Shell Beach', 'Hamelin Pool' galleries, and my "Swim with the Whaleshark" experience out of Coral Bay somewhere in the ocean within the Ningaloo Marine Park. And following that, further north, including the Pilbara area, and Kimberley. These are earlier trips around 2000, and photos were taken with an older camera, so probably don't enlarge too well.

The Whale shark swim happened around 2000, a mammoth experience for me, as I am not an experienced diver and normally swim in the local Aquarena. When one sees an advertisement looking quite simple and exciting, accessible from my trip with Judy up the west coast, one has to tick the box. It is just when one is sitting on a launch, with a helicopter pilot zooming above sending sighting information, and the launch careering off in the direction of this poor whale shark, totally out of sight of land, and somewhere in the ocean off in the Ningaloo Reef Marine Park off the coast of Coral Bay, reality sinks in.

While everyone else was happily donning wetsuits, I was tentatively sliding into mine. I had decided that I would sit on the launch and take photos instead! Waste of time, I was told! Whale sharks don't swim on top of the water! A concerned (female) crew member decided she was not going to let me miss out on this, took hold of my hand, jumped over the side of the boat into the ocean with me, and sent me off after the others, who were following the guide with his arm in the air, paddling furiously in their flippers trying to keep up with this slow swimming whale shark, and in retrospect I am extremely grateful for her determination.

I am also grateful to one of my fellow swimmers who shared his photos of our whale shark taken with his underwater camera. Even if I had one, there was no way I could have coped with an underwater camera whilst trying to stay afloat, swim in the choppy ocean, keep track of our guide with his arm permanently in the air, and keep the required three metres away from the whale shark, who decided to suddenly turn around and head to the launch, put its head out of the water to see what was going on before deciding to dive perpendicularly downwards into the depths of the ocean to disappear completely.

However, one of the highlights of my life...