Western Australia

Friday morning we had an early flight for Perth, where we met Marvin. We will spent 8 days in Western Australia, with a lot of driving and a bit of flying! As soon as we arrived at Marvin's place, we packed up for a small roadtrip down to Esperance, which is located south east of Perth, on the southern coast of Australia. On the first day, we drove down to Hamelin Bay, where we spent a couple of hours playing with stingrays! Beforehand we bought some baits, little frozen fish, so we could give them to the stingrays. There were 5 or 10 of them! 1m20 wide, and they bumped us in the legs so we would give them some bait! There were really big, it's so impressive. I was a bit scared of their stings but I guess they know humans usually fed them so it's better to spare me than to eat me straight away.

After that we went back to Busselton, a town famous for its very long jetty - the longest of the southern hemisphere - 2km! We didn't walk all the way to the end of it, but it was still nice. It was already dark so we just had a dinner and went for our stop, in Walpole.

The following day we visited the Valley of Giants, where eucalyptus trees are tall, up to 80m tall! We did the Tree Top Walk, a path high up in the trees where you can see the surrounding forest. The path only goes up to 40m but that was high enough. Seriously it was a bit scary! We also saw some tingle trees. Only the external part of these trees is living, and when there are wild fires, the inside burns. The result of this is a hole in the trees where you could park your car!

On the way we stopped at several small cities, famous for their whale hunting, and we stopped at a beautiful beach, the Green Pools, where we did some snorkelling. We then continued our way east, to Esperance.

We wanted to go to Esperance to see some beautiful beaches, and to do a bit of diving. We did get our diving licence in February in order to dive in Australia! Our first dive was at the Esperance Pier. We had to walk down the jetty with all the gear, it was not 2km long but still it was long and heavy. In the water, of course warmer, clearer than the quarry in Belgium, we saw the local wildlife, nudi branches (I think it's called like that), corals, other fish, very interesting! There is a famous seal living near the pier of Esperance but we didn't see him unfortunately.

We did a second dive in Lucky Bay, in the National Park of Cape Le Grand, one hour east of Esperance. The place is the only place in the world where we can see leafy seadragons, so we went there in the afternoon!

The dive there was better, in my opinion! Way more fish, corals, etc! So much to look at, but we couldn't see the famous seadragons. There was seaweed everywhere, and corals on the wall, so it was hard to see it... Celine saw one, but when she tried to show him to us, it was already gone :(. Marvin had his underwater case for his camera so we took lots of picture. At the end of the dive, when were already ascending, we saw the coolest thing ever: a seal! He was swimming around us, jumping out of the water, passing under us, always with his eyes looking at us! He was there, playing, 2 meteres away! It was so cool, he played there for 10 or 15minutes! You'll see pics and videos when we'll have a decent internet connexion!

Before returning the gear at the shop, we saw the other beaches of Cape Le Grand, all of them very beautiful.

Today we're heading back to Perth, and tomorrow morning we'll fly north, to Exmouth, where we'll do a bit of diving (one of the 10 most beautiful dives in the world apparently (look at Navy Pier Exmouth on google)), and we'll swim with whale sharks as well! On our way to Perth we will see the wave rock!

Cheers everyone!