If Alexander McQueen designed a slug…
Posted: July 14, 2025 Filed under: Camping | Tags: nature, Photography, travel, wildlife 4 Comments
When you spend enough time dawdling about in the water, you start noticing things you shot right past before. Case in point, slugs. OK. Sea Cucumbers, or Sea Slugs to be precise. I’ve been swimming past these for years not giving them more than a “Ewww, slug” thought. Then I started actually looking at them and realised they are actually quite beautiful.
It all started when we befriended two really lovely young boys and their parents at the camp ground. The boys were dead keen on coming out snorkelling, regardless of swell, wind, grey skies, or tide, emerging every time visibly vibrating from cold but not admitting to it. One of the boys was desperate to see sharks, the other not at all keen to see sharks but studied the fish book and absorbed names and species at lightning pace. He was a clam fan. These boys had a really big impact on me, forever changing the way I looked at things.
These plain old sea cucumbers are everywhere, but looking with my new eyes, I saw a new decoration, and realised it was a tiny sea hare, around 2cm long. It is a kind of shell-less snail with black trim on the frilly sides, a bit like a flamenco dress. I’ve never seen one before, nor since.
Clams were something else I had also largely ignored, but once I started looking at them I noticed two things: Like fingerprints, no two are alike, but not only that, each one is completely different from the others. Some are like dark chocolate velvet. Others with chocolate and cream animal print, studded with turquoise. Genius.
Once I started looking at slow moving things, I also realised there were tiny landscapes everywhere, with multiple species of seaweed, soft corals, hard corals, and plant life, even within a two metre area. I am also very aware that it is so difficult to show scale in marine photos, so I’ll add in some dimensions.
Then of course, there’s sharks. I’ve been taking photos underwater whilst aloft the kayak on our sunset kayaks. Twice now, I’ve downloaded the pics to find sharks in the shot that I did not know were there. Just when you think you’re cool with them. I’ve found a spot where there are generally six at any time, and got some restless shark footage while snorkelling. But that deserves its own post.
In other camp news, a part of the deal when you try and stay in Cape Range for too long, you have to change campsites a bit. Keen to minimise pack up, Waz closes her down, dumps stuff on top and takes the kitchen mobile.
And of course, a post would not be complete without a photo of Waz.
Life imitating nature.
Nullarbor crossing number 15
Posted: May 19, 2025 Filed under: Iconic Australian images | Tags: Australia, cape-le-grand, hiking, nature, Photography, travel 5 Comments
It’s almost 200km long, has a 147km section that is dead straight, features possibly the worlds most arid 18 hole/par 72 golf course that spans 1365km, and somewhere out there 100.000 camels roam. And I’ve driven across it 15 times, twice solo. The camels date back to the 1800s when they were brought over from British India and Afghanistan to help build railroads. All that aside, the coolest thing I reckon is its spitting distance proximity to the coast.
Last year we found this spectacular spot at sunset, right on the edge. Feeling immensely lucky to grab this piece of paradise and only slightly concerned one of us may walk over the edge in the middle of the night, we retired ready for another 1200km day driving. At 1am, the wind threatened to rip all the canvas from around us and throw it into the ocean, so we packed up and got an especially early start.
We didn’t make the same mistake this year and although we have a much more relaxed timeframe, for some reason we still feel the need to drive 12 hours a day.
Our first real stop for longer than 8 hours was Lucky Bay in Cape Le Grand, on the south coast of Western Australia. The beach is unfeasibly white thanks to being almost pure silica, squeaky to walk on and super fine. The last time we were here, there were legions of tourists feeding the resident beach-loving kangaroos various kinds of the worst extruded snacks. This time, I was ready to stage an intervention, but perhaps the crowded beach and many vehicles had changed things, the only kangaroos were up at the campsites, no doubt looking for Cheezels and Twisties.
Among the many walks on offer is the 2km and therefore easy sounding Frenchman Peak, a blob of granite rising 250 metres out of the surrounding bush. Kicking off with a wide and lovely track displaying incredibly delicate lichen, things quickly escalate and I found myself frozen on all fours clinging to tiny divots in the rock surface unable to go up or down. Waz took this pause to check his email.
We had packed in a lot. It was time to head to Perth for supplies!
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 