Western Australia's Coral Coast: Whale Sharks, Stromatolites, and Empty Roads
The stretch of Western Australian coast between Perth and Broome is one of the least-visited great road trips on Earth — 2,000 kilometres of red dirt, turquoise sea, and wildlife encounters that feel genuinely wild.
Western Australia is the largest state in Australia and one of the least densely populated places on Earth — a fact that becomes viscerally apparent when you drive north from Perth along the Indian Ocean Drive and watch the suburbs give way to scrubland, then limestone pinnacles, then the vast red emptiness of the Outback coast. The Coral Coast highway runs for 2,000 kilometres from Perth to Broome, and it is one of the world's great road trips.
Ningaloo Reef, off the coast of Exmouth, is one of the world's largest fringing coral reefs and one of the few places on Earth where whale sharks — the largest fish in the ocean — can be reliably encountered. The season runs from March to July, when the whale sharks aggregate to feed on coral spawn, and snorkelling alongside a creature that can reach 12 metres in length is an experience that defies easy description.
Shark Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site south of Ningaloo, contains the Hamelin Pool stromatolites — living rock formations built by cyanobacteria that are among the oldest life forms on Earth, dating back 3.5 billion years. They look, to the uninitiated eye, like lumpy grey rocks in shallow water, but standing beside them is to stand at the very beginning of life on this planet.
Monkey Mia, in Shark Bay, is famous for the wild bottlenose dolphins that have been coming to the beach to interact with humans since the 1960s. The morning feeding sessions, managed by the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, are carefully controlled to protect the dolphins' wild behaviour, but the experience of standing in ankle-deep water while a dolphin approaches of its own accord is genuinely moving.
The Pinnacles Desert, in Nambung National Park north of Perth, is one of Western Australia's most otherworldly landscapes — thousands of limestone pillars rising from yellow sand, some reaching four metres in height, formed over millions of years as rainwater dissolved the limestone and left the harder cores standing. The best time to visit is at sunset, when the pillars cast long shadows across the sand and the light turns everything gold.
Broome, at the northern end of the Coral Coast, is a town built on the pearl diving industry and still retaining the multicultural character that came from it — Japanese, Malay, and Aboriginal influences visible in the architecture, the food, and the faces of the people. Cable Beach, 22 kilometres of white sand backed by red pindan cliffs, is one of Australia's finest beaches, and the camel rides at sunset are one of those tourist experiences that turns out to be genuinely worth doing.
The practical challenge of the Coral Coast is its distances — Exmouth is 1,270 kilometres from Perth, and the road between towns can be long and hot. A 4WD is not strictly necessary for the main highway but opens up the side roads and national park tracks that lead to the best beaches. Fuel stops are infrequent enough that carrying a spare jerry can is sensible, and the heat between November and March is serious enough to make the cooler months — April to September — the strongly preferred travel window.
The Kalbarri National Park, midway between Perth and Exmouth, contains two of Western Australia's most dramatic landscapes: the Murchison River Gorge, where the river has carved a series of bends through red sandstone over millions of years, and the coastal cliffs of the Bigurda Trail, where the Indian Ocean has undercut the sandstone into arches, blowholes, and natural bridges. The park's new Skywalk, a pair of cantilevered platforms extending over the gorge, offers views that are genuinely vertiginous.
Camping on the Coral Coast is one of the great pleasures of the journey. The national park campsites at Turquoise Bay, Osprey Bay, and Coral Bay are among the finest in Australia — simple facilities, extraordinary settings, and the kind of night sky that is only possible when you are 1,000 kilometres from the nearest city. Booking in advance through the Parks and Wildlife Service website is essential for the peak season of April to September.
The town of Exmouth, the gateway to Ningaloo Reef, has developed significantly in recent years and now has a good range of accommodation, restaurants, and dive operators. The Cape Range National Park, which borders the town to the west, contains the Yardie Creek Gorge — a narrow red canyon accessible by boat or on foot — and the beaches of Turquoise Bay and Oyster Stacks, where the snorkelling directly from the beach is among the finest in Australia. Hiring a snorkel and fins from one of the Exmouth dive shops and spending a day drifting over the reef is the single best activity on the Coral Coast.
