Exmouth, Western Australia
A day spent around Exmouth: driving to a few lookouts in Cape Range National Park, seeing the huge radio antenna at the Northwest Cape, and just enjoying the scenery.
Well, we decided to check out of the Ningaloo Lodge. It's basically a glorified backpackers, and a bit overpriced at $70 for a rather small room.
Our first stop of the day was the drive up Knife's ridge. Neat. Very scenic, big 300 meter deep limestone valleys, falling away to the Exmouth Gulf. Took quite a few pictures.
Then, we went up Shothole Canyon. That was also dramatic canyon scenery, though this time it was from the bottom looking up. Lots of pretty flowers there, including a beautiful hibiscus like flower.
After some shopping, we checked out a few other places to stay in town tonight. The Best Western is actually 5km north of town, and is a converted US Navy enlisted men's barracks... cinderblock and all. It's not that attractive. So we checked in to the Potshot Hotel Resort, in a budget room. Sure, it's $85, but it's pretty OK. And it has a telephone line!
Then it was off to the cape's tip to check out a few other sights. The radio antennas up there are huge: the center one is taller than the Empire State Building, and there are twelve other 'smaller' ones ringing it. By small, that still means these towers are over 300 meters high! The antennas are used for US submarine communications.
After that, a drive to the light house let us look north, west, and east over the ocean--and the reef, with the waves breaking offshore. Some of the waves look very surfable, too!
Then it was a quick visit to an old shipwreck just off the beach that was mildly interseting... and back to the room, where we cleaned up for the seafood buffet. Yum!
Nothing much.