15 years and counting.
Posted: June 12, 2025 Filed under: Iconic Australian images | Tags: Australia, Camping, Cape Range National Park, hiking, nature, Ningaloo Reef, Nyinggulu, outback, roadtrip, snorkelling, travel, WA 3 Comments
Osprey Bay is our favourite of the 11 campgrounds in Cape Range National Park. Cape Range is the most accessible entry point for Ningaloo Reef requiring a two wheel drive vehicle, and 20m walk into the water to see reef fish going about their business. We’ve been coming to Cape Range since around 2010, and our first favourite was Lakeside campground before a severe storm washed it away along with someone’s camper trailer, which has not been seen since.
Each of the bays offer something different. Turquoise Bay is Insta famous for its prettiness. Oyster Stacks for the amazing array of fish, and Osprey? The turtles. So many turtles, it’s turtle soup. You can also get a campsite right on the water, with a view of the ocean, sunset, and whales breaching between August and October. Of course, there’s a cost to this. Not the $20 a night we pay for our prime real estate, but eight months prior we get up around 15 nights in total at 2.30am Adelaide time, in order to book a site. Harder to get than an AFL Grand Final ticket, sites are released at midnight Perth local time, six months ahead of the available date, and book out within LITERAL seconds. Waz has it down to a fine art, honed over many nights poring over multiple screens to eventual fail yet again. His commitment and attention to the matter of booking Osprey every year is probably one of his greatest achievements to date. Determined to beat all odds, he had me lurch awake with him at 2.10am and sit in front of my laptop and iPhone with strict instructions and a timing countdown to the second for when I was to repeatedly refresh my screens.
So here we are. At our favourite place, in our favourite site. Over 16 years of travelling around Australia, we have finessed the set up somewhat. We started staying at Roadhouses where there were so many mice the ground looked like it was moving. We stayed in Backpacker Hostels with the great unwashed and your stuff went missing from the line. We’ve stayed in Motels where you wake up with mouse poo on your pillow, freakishly next to your mouth. About 2009 we upgraded to a swag. For the non-Aussies that’s a giant canvas pillowcase you put your sleeping bag in, squeeze into that, and spend the rest of the night claustrophobically seeking air around the canvas covering over head. At Mt Dare in the centre of Australia, we had dingoes sniffing our toes, and awoke to a blanket of frost on the swag exterior, and 100% condensation in the interior.
In 2010 we spoilt ourselves with a two room tent, the construction of which was longer than the time we slept in it, and a solid marriage tester. In 2011 we hired a soft floor camper trailer and giddy with the luxury, decided to buy one off Gumtree located in Brisbane, not so far from Woodend, Victoria. One week after spending four months long service leave around the country in the soft floor, Waz got all excited and bought a hard floor, our first Aussie Swag, a triumph of Australian engineering and practicality. We had moved to Perth at the time, so I was dispatched to QLD to retrieve it. I had nights on the Nullarbor alone, but the busy Roadhouses were actually scarier. To get to your room you have to walk past a line of male guests sitting outside their rooms smoking and holding a tinny of Jack and coke and silently watching you. Then there’s the vehicles that double back when you’re at an outpost service station, and the driver pulls up to chat. No refuelling.
9 years and about 200000km later we are we are in our second Aussie Swag and out at Osprey, we are an oddity. It used to be a mix of hippy camper vans, a chaotic mess of two minute noodles, incense, tie dye, and an interior that looked like it needed a forensic clean, grey nomads in well loved Millard, Coromal and Jayco caravans, and tiny two man tents housing hardy Scandinavians, shelf stable wraps, cans of tuna and boiled eggs. Now it is either enormous caravans, roof top tents, or fancy camper vans, and about every two weeks a camper trailer may appear for a night or two. The demographic has changed over 15 years as well. What were hardy fisher folk, adventurous grey nomads, alternative lifestylers and remarkably intrepid Europeans are now mostly young families doing a one year loop, retirees, 25-30 somethings on a two week break seeking Insta moments, and a considerable representation of the European and South American continents. Campsites are awash with bikes, boats, scooters, skateboards, inflatable stand up paddle-boards, satellite and Starlink dishes. Some sites look like a teenage boys bedroom, others are, well, like ours.
We’ve set up often enough now that the recriminations are long gone and we now have our assigned tasks which we have allocated without discussion. Usually set up occurs in blazing sun, occasionally with a testing wind, so the less said, the better. It takes about two hours to do the full one month occupation set up, after which there is cold beer and a swim to reinstate a sense of humour.
When you think you know everything
Posted: December 2, 2018 Filed under: Australia, Iconic Australian images, Landscapes, WA | Tags: Ningaloo Reef, Osprey Bay 3 CommentsI am reminded that when you think you know something, you know nothing Jon Snow.
About six years ago at Osprey Bay we went for a snorkel to the right of the boat entry point and saw nothing but sea grass and three fish. We declared the area barren and religiously snorkelled a small circle to the left every year since.
FAIL. Turns out I am terrible at taking photos underwater with something with no viewfinder. Most shots are on this weird angle and miss the main subject completely.
And then there’s my dodgy underwater filming (nod to The Blair Witch Project for unintended style inspiration)…y
This trip we had a chat with an American couple who said they had seen 40 turtles to the right. Say whaaaat? I figured that if I divided that by ten, it would be about right. Off we went, and presto! proceeded to bang into eight turtles more interested in sea grass than us. You literally had to swim around them in one metre of water. It was mating season and they were fuelling up for what appeared to be a game of turtle Stacks-On* at sunset.
FAIL. A case for not giving me the underwater movie camera.
We chatted to another couple who said neighbouring Sandy Bay was great snorkelling too. Back when we knew everything, we wrote it off as all sand and kite surfers. Apparently not. It teems with amazing coral and abundant fish-life just waiting for us; Moray eels, stonefish, and octopus a plenty. The strong current means crystal clear water at hightide, and very few other people with adequate kicking power.
Two Octopus holding tentacles (awwwww!) and hanging out with their friend (do you think they know it’s coral?)
I’ve always been super jumpy with fish over 1.5 metres like sharks, sting rays, and even manta rays, no matter how many times I’m told they are harmless, but by this stage I was spending five hours a day in the water. The nerves had to go; it was time to make friends with the reef sharks.
Waz testing a hands-free approach
At dawn and dusk, Waz would generally fish while I would tour the coral. There were always reef sharks hanging around with intent, circling me with their beady Mona Lisa eyes. I settled on a new strategy: to swim toward them. And thus, my love of sharks was born.
The well-kept secret that is Ningaloo is showing signs of a security leak, thanks to WA Tourism’s successful campaigns in Europe and Asia. If you fancy a bit of fish time or simply white sands and turquoise water, go soon. While it is more difficult to access than the Great Barrier, it is already much busier than it was six years ago, and of course the ever present threat of global warming means every year is precious. You won’t be bothered by President T either (only The Orange One would give himself a nickname), who will be kicking back at Mar-a-Lago safe in the knowledge that the phenomenon is a hoax invented by the Chinese, and dead when Florida and Mar-a-Lago is underwater.
An absolutely awesome young teenager from the camp across from us was travelling Australia with her family. She loved the water as much as I do and appeared every time I got the snorkelling gear out. Despite the worst goggles in Christendom, and just a bikini (I’d turn white and feel nothing after 20 minutes without a wetsuit) she never tired of it. She was handy with a loom, (everyone with a child aged between eight and 15 would know what this is) and sold key rings in AFL team colours to campers and gave me our camp mascots.
Our own tentacle holding Octopus camp mascots created and gifted by the lovely L.
She also had her own fishing gear and knew all the fisher person speak. She, along with many other camp kids we meet, is going to be an amazing adult.
Munty (our name) the resident one legged Corella who has perfected a cute head tilt and suitably dishevelled appearance for snacks.
For those travelling to Exmouth to see the Whalesharks, Cape Range offers fantastic snorkelling from the beach:
Oyster Stacks – most variety, tidal limitations, and a bit of current
Turquoise Bay – the most instagrammable
Lakeside – has the big things
South Mandu – an amazing drift 20 metres from shore
Why did the lizard cross the path?
And now, for everyone’s favourite segment: What’s on the menu at WOKA?**
Bug and grass fed Chicken, tenderly embraced by prosciutto that once roamed the same pasture, kept company with chargrilled vegetables – a Symphony in Yellow – and finished in Spanish spice.
*A game where one person is ‘it’, someone yells “Stacks ON!” and everyone else jumps onto the person that is ‘it’.
**WOKA – Wazza’s Outdoor Kitchen Australia
Fear and reward
Posted: May 30, 2013 Filed under: Australia, Camping, Landscapes, WA | Tags: Australia, Camping, Cape Range National Park, exmouth, Lakeside, landscapes, Ningaloo Reef, Photography, snorkelling, sunset, Travel, WA Leave a comment
Lakeside beach
I am quietly finning along, snorkelling for the third time that day at Lakeside, on the Ningaloo Reef in the magical Cape Range National Park. If this rings a bell, it is because I harp on about the place incessantly, there is so much life out in the water. Along with Turquoise Bay, it is a favourite with day-trippers. Borne by tour buses, they amble to the spot with the snorkel marker, march directly out for around 30 metres, flop about for 20 minutes, then retire to shore to smoke, look bored with precision, and burn a new layer of ‘it sucks to be my family back in Europe’ into their undernourished frames.
Turquoise Bay smile – that little lump on the horizon is the reef
It was at Lakeside that I had an epiphany in 2008. With nothing but the rasp of parrotfish beak-on-coral in my ears, my brain found a space to discover I actually wanted to be a photographer. (And a marine biologist – but that ship had sailed). Snorkelling or diving is the only time I truly switch off. Underwater, where air is generally absent, is ironically when I feel most able to breathe. The eternally blue space, without walls or fences, represents endless possibility for me.
So, I am quietly swimming in and around the rocky outcrops, following a fish that completely changes its colour and pattern as I get close or back off, a peeved turtle, 4m ray, and pausing to watch a plague of parrotfish engulf a patch of coral, the tiny territorial resident fish dashing out and back nervously. Just when it could not get any better, a huge school of mackerel and other silvery fish with wide eyes swept past and then started circling me, gaining pace as they went round. I decided to join their circling, and as I went round and round was thinking “Choice! They think Im their bro! I’m a mermaid!”. Amazed they cared not a whit as I whipped by the other fish and matched their crazy changes in direction, I was at once silver and fishy. Then it occurred to me. They are commonly known as bait-fish. And a school of darting bait-fish are probably being chased. Not that those three reef sharks and their homies, Trevor Trevally, and Barry Barra, liked the cut of my gib, but it’s safe to say I found myself ashore with no recollection of the breathless flail between realisation and landfall.
view to the west
When we returned to our camp, we shared a beverage with our lovely Swiss neighbour, J, a fellow water-baby with designs on the outer reef. He had travelled for some months around WA in his wagon, sleeping in the back, and reliant on a dwindling collection of camping ephemera. As days rolled by he realised he only used one plate, cup, knife, fork and spoon. Subsisting happily on long-life wraps, honey, nutella, and canned goods, his camp stove, multiple devices of convenience and esky (chilly bin) found new homes with the Belgians that packed every other camp site.
J wanted buddies to go and explore the outer reef. He had gone out on his own but was worried he may be…ahem…taken, and no-one would know. Fortified with a zesty cider from Harcourt in Victoria, I found myself consulting tide and moon charts and committing both W and I to an outer reef expedition with the excitement I always have when an adventure of any kind is afoot, and drive I have to never miss out.
Cape Range National Park
The following day, in the last 30 minutes of an incoming tide was the only opportunity in the next 7 days, when the tide would be high enough to swim over the reef edge. J knew the way and so three small figures swam out to the reef, quickly invisible to those on shore. The thing about a reef is that waves from the outside hit the edge, rise up and then smash down. Along with a titan tidal-pull, I found myself swimming two strokes forward, getting drilled by excitable waves, then dragged back 4 strokes, enjoying a nasal flush along the way. I don’t think it is a spoiler alert to say we made it, and the silence on the other side was astounding. The water clarity, unmatched. A long shelf of volcanic rock and an amazing variety of coral sat around 15 metres below us and ran out about 40 metres before dropping off into Predator World. As we followed the edge of the reef, we swam over enormous cracks in the reefs surface, so deep you could only see fish in the first few metres framed by blackness. Think awe meets terror. Leaving a sacrificial layer of dermis on the way back over the reef edge, we plotted to do it the next day, knowing full well the ideal conditions to go over the reef, had past.
Again at dusk, three figures headed out, this time for an elusive gap in the reef that we could sneak through. It was a much longer swim and after about a kilometre, I found myself musing on the relative benefits of such activities. There are bitey things out there, but I figure the risk versus reward profile points in the right direction. I never take the ocean for granted, and I accept the side of scaredy-cat that comes with the incredible beauty I get to breathe in.
The welling surf and sinking sun loomed large in my overactive mind. Stuff incredible beauty inhalation, I waved the boys on and with a feeling like there wasn’t enough air in the sky, swam to shore with an urgency that just skirted fish-in-distress. It is great to be alive.
As I see it 