Exmouth, September 1997

Exmouth is only a couple of hours from Coral Bay. I booked with the Exmouth Dive Centre, who also arranged all my accommodation for me. When I got there, it was all part of the same complex, as well as a motel-hotel and the only pub in town. Backpackers were allowed to use the hotel's facilities like the pool. The only downside was that I was sharing a room for the first time since Perth, and they had bunk beds. I'm not keen on bunk beds.

I booked myself on a couple of days diving and decided to have a bit of a rest for a day and a half. It had been a bit of a late night the night before, so I thought I could do with some sleep. However, by midday the second day, I was a bit bored so I asked if there was any chance of a night dive that night. Exmouth Dive Centre is the only dive shop allowed to dive the Navy Pier. It was built to service the US base back in the 1960s. Before they built the base, Exmouth didn't really exist. The base is used for very low frequency radio communications with submarines. The radio towers are actually the tallest structures in the southern hemisphere and you can see them miles off of shore. These days the Americans have gone home, though the base is still operation, albeit much scaled down.

The pier is a substantial structure that was built to withstand cyclones and, over the years, it's become the home to a lot of fish life. We dived in a three, with a DM doing the navigation. She was actually a fellow British backpacker, who was getting her dives for free, and it later turned out that she had less than half as many dives as I did. Still she had done the site in the day and I certainly wouldn't have fancied doing it the first time at night if I had had to do the navigation. The pier has to be dived at slack water, and it was spring tides, so the window was only about 45 mins. The dive itself wasn't bad. The torches supplied were average, though not great, and we saw a scorpion fish out hunting was well as various schools. When we surfaced a dolphin jumped out of the water right next to us and slapped its tail. Maximum depth on the dive was 12m. At least I didn't feel cold this time because, although I had a 3mm wetsuit on, they'd given me a wetsuit top to put on over it.

The next day we went out for a 2 tank dive on one of their boats. The tides were giving a bit of trouble because the boat was a bit grounded, though they did manage to float it free. Derby, which is up the coast from Exmouth, has the second biggest tidal range in the world, so it's often a problem in that part of the world.

I was diving with a DM trainee, who'd naturally done fewer dives than me, and another guy. The first site was called Blizzard Ridge. It was a limestone ridge with various overhangs cut into it and some coral growing on it. The fish life was fantastic. As we descended there were big shoals of fusiliers and spanish flag. Then we spotted an 8 foot long leopard shark asleep under a ledge. Not much further on was a wobbegon shark, then a blue spotted stingray, a sea snake, an octopus and then a small lionfish. All in all, it was a pretty fantastic dive. The maximum depth was 13.8m and our dive time was 45 mins. I did have enough air to have stayed down for longer, but after that I wasn't really complaining.

The second dive of the day obviously had a lot to live up to. It was still good, though not as good as the first one. The site was called the labyrinth and the depth was the same as the previous dive. Again there were lots of fusiliers and spanish flag about as well as some dart fish, a shoal of juvenile barracuda and a hawksbill turtle at the end. So it was not a bad dive. The viz was about 15m, as it had been for the first dive.

The next day I was booked on a trip to the Muiron Islands. They're a couple of small, fairly barren islands out in Exmouth Gulf. Unfortunately, the big tides had stirred up the viz so we couldn't do the Cod Hole, where you can feed huge potato cod. They had to fall back on doing a drift dive. They weren't really prepared for it, so we had to go in two large groups with the DMs clutching a big coil of rope attached to a surface marker buoy. They were even reduced to using a spare BCD as an SMB. It was quite funny really. I'm glad I wasn't leading.

The site was a channel between the two islands. There wasn't much current, so it wasn't much of a drift. There were a lot of soft corals, sea fans, anemones and nudibranches about. It made quite a change from the other dives I'd done there. It was quite shallow though, with a maximum depth of 10.2m and the usual viz of around 15m.

The second dive of the day was after lunch, which was all provided and was quite reasonable. The boat anchored in some sand off of one of the islands close to a series of coral bommies. The fish life wasn't bad and we saw some juvenile barracuda, grouper, snapper and several sailfin catfish rummaging around in the sand. I dived in a buddy pair as had been originally planned for the first dive before we switched to doing the drift. It was quite a shallow dive though, with a maximum depth of 9.6m and the viz was a bit worse than earlier at 12m.

Other than diving, there's not a lot else to do in Exmouth. It's not a very big place, though it is very spread out, which is a pain if you haven't got any transport. The town beach is quite a long way from the backpackers hostel, though it was possible to hire bikes. Apart from about 4 dive shops, there's also a couple of supermarkets, a bank and a few other shops. The pub did have a disco one Saturday night, but that's about as exciting as it gets there.

The diving was well worth it. Exmouth Dive Centre are professional and the people are friendly. When they tell you to be at the centre for a certain time, it means that the minibus is going to leave 30 mins later. There's no hanging around for an hour for no apparent reason. They did try to organise some diving on the outer Ningaloo reef while I was there, but I was the only person who signed up for it, so it didn't happen. At least they try. The telephone number is (08) 9949 1201. They also have a website.

My itinerary after Exmouth got a bit complicated. I had an internal flight from Karratha to Broome, but I didn't really want to go all the way to Karratha. There is an airport at Exmouth called Learmonth but I remembered having tried to book a flight from there in England and was told it wasn't available with the pass I had. What I didn't remember was whether I could fly from Carnarvon, but I thought it would be worth trying to have it changed. I rang Ansett, who didn't answer for well over 10 minutes, and they couldn't tell me but suggested I go into the office of their agent in Exmouth.

The actual flight was on a flight run by Skywest. So I went into the travel agent, which I think was run by Skywest, and it didn't look possible to change my flight on the computer. But he rang them up and they said they'd honour the ticker from Carnarvon. I don't think I was really allowed to fly from there, but I wasn't complaining. Quite why I wasn't allowed to I don't know, because it was the same flight and the same flight number.

So I took the bus down to Carnarvon which took about 4 hours. The most exciting thing about Carnarvon is that the main street is very wide because camel trains used come through there. After that, everything else is a anti-climax. The bus got in at around 7pm, and I checked in at the Carnarvon Hotel-Motel. I thought I'd spoil myself and it only cost $35. It was great, with an en-suite bathroom, and even a television. If only you could get that sort of accommodation everywhere for that price. So by about 8.45pm I went to look for something to eat. There is nowhere that serves food in Carnarvon after 8.30pm. The entire place is like a grave. There are about 4 people in each of the pubs and that's about as lively as it gets. In the end I had a packet of Twisties and went back and watched the Premier League on the television. So the evening wasn't a total disaster.

The next day I got on the plane, a small turbo prop, and we flew straight back to Learmonth. So the whole trip to Carnarvon was a bit of a waste of time. They had plans on the wall about developing the airport to become international, so hopefully it should get easier to get to Exmouth. The flight then went to Karratha and then onto Broome. It was quite boring because the plane was too small to have any flight attendants so you didn't even get a drink.

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