EXMOUTH, MONKEY MIA, NINGALOO REEF AND THE CORAL COAST OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA

It took me two years, before I could write the latest article I wrote, about Myanmar. (If you haven't read it, click here). It wasn't laziness, or a difficulty to write, but I was lacking the inner peace needed to introduce the country and see the pictures again. That time has finally arrived. 

What can I say, then, about an article that took me 8 years to write ? In 2010, I was going through a very rough patch in my life, which included the loss of my two grandparents in a row, my grandfather and then a few weeks later my grandmother. I was also dealing with an alcoholic roommate, which I had wrongly trusted, after my best friend of ten years left me stranded in a Montmartre apartment that we had just signed the lease to, leaving me to pay the outrageously expensive rent which I couldn't afford. So I had had to find a roommate urgently, and this nice chef guy seemed to be the solution, before living with him turned out to be a nightmare. 

At work, I was doing every day some 4 hour commute to teach at the remotest suburbs a junior high school could be found at. Cherry on the cake, I was being abused by a rigid boss who didn't trust any of my competences to teach, and demanded to see me in her office every other week. My colleagues were young women professionals who were conceited, and thought they had seen it all, at age 25,  when they had never once in their lives travelled beyond the suburbs of Paris, and whose main concern were their infants and their husbands, of which I had none. I was as a consequence looked down upon, having just freshly arrived to teach after a long pause of two years which included my round the world tour. I simply had nothing to share with these people, and they with me. My main class, was led by a bully, whose parents hadn't thought fit to educate before she turned the school to havoc. To put it briefly, life was not a poem.

I urgently needed to travel, to reconnect with my true nature, put all these tragedies behind me, and I also wanted to fall in love again, as quickly as possible. So I signed up for two months in Australia, to see this guy I liked, in Perth. A city that I had really enjoyed and appreciated on my first visit to Australia, in 2008, and that I looked forward to coming back to. 

I didn't have any plan. I booked a return flight to Perth, from Paris, via Bangkok I think, and that was it. The plan was to land (crash, more like), at the guy's apartment until we decided what would happen.

What happened immediately was the realization for me that this would be no honeymoon, and we left for a weekend trip to Monkey Mia, with two of his friends and an agreement that I would be left to nurse my hurt heart and silly ideas in Exmouth, while they would be returning the three of them to Perth, and I would be continuing my journey North, up the western coast of Australia. So this is what happened. I don't really recall Monkey Mia as stupendous, as I think I saw it in a daze. My mind was frantically focused on my failures, this hard year, what to do next. It was a crash landing all right, on that beach. I probably saw some dolphins, even petted some (yes, you can pet wild dolphins in Australia, although technically if you are petting them they are no longer wild. But it's still nice I guess, since this is no marine park, they are free to go, there's no training involved etc. At least at the time I visited, in 2010.) 

So here I was, in Exmouth, Western Australia. I arrived by night, and I remember not finding the hotel I was supposed to stay at. I ended up in another place, where I met some nice friends the next day. This helped me a lot. They helped me a lot. There were two girls, one from Germany, one from the Czech republic, traveling also, and a guy from Great Britain I think, but I don't remember him well because he didn't stay too long with us. He had a car, which was nice because the first days we went on trips with it. He and the German girl were sleeping in it, and lots of people had just one car, one tent, or sometimes, one tent on top of a car. 

I don't remember much about what we did during the day, but I vividly remember my feelings, of slow despair at first, and then of being trapped in the middle of nowhere. At the same time, I was fascinated. What could draw all the tourists here ? I felt like I had arrived at the beginning of times. This was caused by the surrealistic sights of strange birds I had never seen before or never heard sing, some were croaking in notes that sounded like they were dinosaurs. I felt like I had traveled to the jurassic era, because of this red earth all around, the nothingness of this straight road, the birds' grave croaking and the dreamlike sequences of walking to the one or few shops (at the time) of the "town", seeing trees with strange fruit like old shoes, and even doubting the sea was close by as it was nowhere to be seen at the place I was staying at. 

We had a service station. We had ice cream. We even had pizza, at a smallish restaurant of the "resort" I was staying at, and we had a place to do laundry. What we didn't have, was a way to get out, once the guy with the car had gone. The buses were rare, and their tickets cost as much as airplane tickets. At first, we decided to hitch-hike with the German girl, being aware that hitch-hiking in wild places and the outback of Australia can be either a great experience, or can turn into a nightmare for two pretty (still young) girls like us. But I was experienced since my RTW tour, and did know all this. I trusted my intuition, and the good will of people. Unfortunately, that time, no people came. Not one truck, not one car stopped, or wasn't full. It was the middle of nowhere, Australia. 

So after trying for one whole day we finally grabbed a computer, miraculously found a running bus that went through Exmouth, paid the *non-budget* hefty sum to be taken elsewhere, and off we went, relieved. 

I still love Exmouth. Despite the heartbreak, and despite the feeling of nothingness, which was more of an inner state I think. In literature, it's called pathetic fallacy, when the landscape reflects the emotions of the character. That's what was happening. I had landed where the dark place of my mind was, and it looked like this. 

I went to do a whale shark swim-along tour, and that kind of shook me out of my daze. I remember being scared to go into the water, and then being in shock at the size of the fish, and then being extra careful what it did with its tail and where the others were not to bump into them, all this underwater. Every time I see something wonderful, and especially animals in the wild, I am overwhelmed. I immediately start to shed tears. This is embarrassing, as I can't control it, but underwater with a mask and fins, it shows less. 

It sounded more like an elephant cry in the snorkel, and then I caught my breath and was focused on looking. How amazing. How gorgeous. What a calm, extraordinary placid animal that was. Artfully decorated with little white spots, and it was so reassuring to know, that this huge mouth was only looking for plancton, not 30-something girls from France clumsily swimming along. He could have killed me in 5 seconds if he was a predator. But not all big animals are predators for men, whereas man is a predator for all animals, which makes it so unfair to nature. 

What else do I remember. We went to Coral Bay, which was bliss. I love beaches, and this beach was so pure, so pretty, like a soft sanded postcard from heaven. Unlimited skies, smooth floor with gentle little waves, seagulls, and other little birds I didn't know everywhere, and when I looked down in the shallow water I was waddling into, there came a stingray to salute me. I could just bend, and take as many pictures I wanted, I could see it really well in the clear water. I had seen stingrays already in Bora Bora during my Round the world tour, and so I was aware that they are the friendliest and funniest little creatures. But what luck !! 

We went to Broome. Broome was an extremely interesting city, in spite of being remote from everything, and in particular, from the rest of the world, being Australia, but also remote from Australians themselves, being on the less populated and explored, wilder, western coast. Broome had everything : nice schools with beautiful nicely cut grass, the biggest and best beach for sunset, a very interesting history of pearl diving, restaurant porches to lounge at night when the sun had set, and I was staying in a hostel that had a giant inner pool, bordered by palm trees and wooden constructions that were in fact the spacious and well ventilated dorms. And to crown it all, we had "the worlds oldest operating picture gardens" (open air theater). A must see. 

I think I liked it very much. Part of the fun was due to the fact that I was with two German girls with whom we went to the beach and did the activities. But the time to leave had arrived, and the difficulty for me would be how, since I didn't want to take any buses, that were too expensive and didn't stop much on the way. I wanted to find a seat in a travellers' car, and continue with them, camping and roughing it a little to see more stuff. 

That would be another part of my trip, from Broome to Kununurra, which I will tell you about in the next article. 

To sum up my impressions about the Coral Coast, that we would be leaving after leaving Broome : it was great. Every Australian should visit this part of their country, do the whale shark experience at least once in their lives, and contemplate the peaceful view of the sun setting on Cable Beach, Broome, WA. At the time, I felt like most people who did it weren't  Australians. They were mostly Germans, and European people, but very few of these elderly people in camping cars and caravans we could see elsewhere all around Australia. Maybe it has changed since then, and now it's well traveled, and all built up with ice cream parlours for the 9 AM ice cream, and cafés for the 11 AM coffee. But as despaired as I was, I realize now how lucky I was to see all this, in perfect pristine and untouched condition, beaches so unbuilt they looked like they were created yesterday by the landscape, and water so clear and so clean it had a profusion of wildlife in it. 

8 years later, I hope it's still one of the beautiful places on earth. Although I am no longer ignorant about the state of the ocean these days, and doing my share to restrain and even ditch completely my use of plastic if possible, even here, 19 000 km away, because I know it's useful, and the only sensible thing to do.  

And now, enough of beaches. Let's see the rest of the western coast ... How about red mountains, billabongs and crocodiles ? I knew you'd say yes. 

(To be continued)

>> Travels of The Sausage >> S. L. 

IF YOU ARE PLANNING A VISIT TO AUSTRALIA'S CORAL COAST, WHICH I HIGHLY RECOMMEND : YOU MAY WANT TO VISIT THIS WEBSITE https://www.australiascoralcoast.com IT LOOKS THOROUGH & VERY WELL MADE.