Whale Sharks & Ningaloo Coast Wildlife

Fly into Learmonth Airport, about 37km south of Exmouth. Your transfer is booked and timed to meet the scheduled flights, and it is a short ride into town. Check in at your hotel, where you stay for all six nights. The afternoon is yours: head to the pool, or take a walk around Exmouth to get your bearings. At 5pm your guide runs a briefing covering the week, the survey work and the safety requirements for the water days. It takes about an hour. Most groups head out to dinner together afterwards. Overnight: Exmouth. Meals: None.

A full day on the water inside the reef. The cruise works through the coral shallows of the lagoon looking for manta rays, leopard sharks, turtles, dolphins and, with luck, dugongs. Seabirds work the surface overhead, and Wilson’s storm-petrels are sometimes seen foraging above the water. Snorkelling is optional and supported by an experienced crew, with three or four stops at different reef sites and bommies. Gear is provided, and beginners are welcome; this is the day to get comfortable in the water before the whale shark trip. Lunch, snacks and drinks are included on the boat. Overnight: Exmouth. Meals: B/L.

Inland and west into Cape Range National Park. Most people who come to Exmouth for the reef never see this side of the trip: arid limestone gorges, sandplain flora and white sand beaches, all of it inside the World Heritage Area. The limestone holds freshwater beneath it, which is what keeps plants and animals going in a park this dry. We spend the day on foot and by vehicle. The main work is in a gorge where black-flanked rock-wallabies live, monitoring and recording sightings and noting population size. The animals move across sheer red rock faces with an ease that is hard to believe until you watch it. Western bowerbirds work the gorges, lizards and the occasional gecko turn up on the rocks, and early in the morning dingoes are often finishing a night’s hunting. As the day warms, spotted harriers course low over the saltbush, and osprey, wedge-tailed eagles and several falcon species are all possible. Australian bustards are seen in the park from time to time. Late in the day, walk along a white-sand beach beside the coral lagoon, looking for sea and land birds. Overnight: Exmouth. Meals: B/L.

The eastern side of the range is a different landscape. Shallow gorges give way to deeply incised canyons. The day starts at a viewpoint out over Exmouth Gulf with the far shoreline just visible on the horizon, and from the same spot you can look down into one of the canyons and get a sense of how deep the range is cut. Common wallaroos are possible here, along with Australian ringnecks, Nankeen kestrels and a range of arid-zone birds, among them finches, galahs, corellas, honeyeaters and fairywrens. Lunch is in Exmouth at Federation Park, followed by a siesta through the hottest part of the day. In the late afternoon, head to Bundegi Beach to record what has washed up on shore and clear debris off the coast. The day finishes at Vlamingh Head Lighthouse, which has stood above the cape since 1912, watching for humpback blows as the sun goes down. Overnight: Exmouth. Meals: B/L.

This is the day most people book the tour for. You travel by boat out past the reef into open water to find feeding whale sharks. The sharks turn up here reliably enough that DBCA licenses a fixed season for them. Everyone who wants to swim is fitted with snorkel gear and given a pre-swim snorkel and a full briefing from local divemasters before you reach the sharks. The briefing covers feeding patterns, sex and behaviour, how to photograph them and how to approach and swim with them. Whale sharks at Ningaloo are generally between 2 and 12m long. They are slow-moving, largely undisturbed by swimmers and curious enough that they will often come to you. If you would rather not swim, you can see the whale sharks from the boat and still snorkel away from the sharks over Ningaloo Reef itself, with turtles, sea snakes, rays, dolphins, harmless reef sharks and thousands of fish sheltering around the coral bommies. Spotter planes find the sharks from the air and the pilots talk directly to the in-water guide, which is what makes the encounters work. Morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and refreshments are included across the roughly eight-hour trip. With a plane overhead, there is a chance of a late-travelling humpback as well. Overnight: Exmouth. Meals: B/L.

Back to the western side of North West Cape to cover more of the Ningaloo Coast World Heritage Area. There is more here than two days can hold, so the tour splits this side of the peninsula across two days rather than trying to do it in one. At Yardie Creek Gorge the walk goes inland into the range, high above the water. Spinifex pigeons are shy and not guaranteed, but this walk has produced them before, along with black flying-foxes in the roost and more black-flanked rock-wallabies on the walls. The day ends on a white sand beach with a last free swim in the lagoon, or a sit on the sand watching the Indian Ocean break over the outer reef. Overnight: Exmouth. Meals: B/L.

Breakfast, then check out. If you have booked the optional one-hour Ningaloo scenic flight, it departs at 9am, and we will send you the details separately. Meals: B.