Page 56 Daily Mail, Saturday, August 17, 2019
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Escape:
INDIAN
OCEAN20 milesExmouthExmouthCoral BayCoral BayNingaloo
Coast World
Heritage AreaNingaloo
ReefCape
Range
National
ParkPerthPerthAUSTRALIAAUSTRALIAWHALE SHARK
I would get to see Boris arriving
at Buckingham Palace to
‘kiss hands’ with Her Majesty
The Queen.
Another comforting thought
was that, even in August
without the whale sharks,
Ningaloo was at the top of my
list of places to visit.
Take the coral reefs, for
example. The Ningaloo World
Heritage Area, a two-hour flight
from Perth, has one of the
largest coral reefs on earth.
At a time when so many reefs
around the world have been
affected by pollution, or
bleaching, or other forms of
degradation, the coral here is
both gloriously pristine and
astonishingly varied.
There are 220 species to
discover and, despite not being
a coral expert, I’m pretty sure I
saw most of them.
What’s more, you don’t have
to get in a boat and spend
hours getting out to the reef.
What makes Ningaloo unique
is that you can explore the
Technicolor wonderland
simply by stepping off the
beach into the water with
flippers, snorkel and a mask.
Ningaloo is a ‘fringing’ reef
— one that is close to the shore
— and one of the finest in
the world.
The good news is that the
humpback whales, heading up
from Antarctica for the warmer
waters of the Kimberley Coast,
were already out in force.
On my first evening, I sat with
a glass of Margaret River
merlot in hand on the Sal
Salis Safari Camp’s veranda,watching the humpbacks
breaching and blowing just
beyond the reef, almost within
hailing distance.
More than 30,000 humpbacks
pass through these waters each
year. If you are close enough
when they blow, you can get a
strong whiff of whatever it was
they had for lunch.
Next morning, while my
fellow guests — a charming
family from Paris and a
Peruvian couple — went off to
swim with the whales, I joined
what was possibly the last
‘swim with the whale sharks’
excursion of the season. I
couldn’t help feeling they had
put an extra one on the sched-
ule just to accommodate me.
We headed out through a gap
in the reef into the offshore
waters, then turned south. I
could see the spotter plane
overhead. An hour passed. No
whale sharks.
We had a sandwich lunch onboard. Still no whale sharks.
Even the plane seemed to
have disappeared.
Around 2pm, we suddenly
turned to starboard and headed
north, back up the coast the
way we had come.
Chiara, a young Italian
woman, whose job would be to
film us in the water if and
when we encountered a whale
shark, explained: ‘The spotter
plane has seen a whale shark
up towards the Cape. Better
get ready.’
I owe a lot to Chiara.
When the moment came, a
dozen of us slid quickly into the
water with our wetsuits and
snorkels — but Chiara seemed
to take special care of me. ‘Stick
close to me,’ she said.
So I did. She even grasped
my hand to turn me in the
right direction.
‘Look behind you,’ she
mouthed behind her face mask,
pointing her huge underwater
camera. I turned my head as
instructed. The sight of the
whale shark that day I shall
never forget.
It was 7 m or 8 m long,
swimming faster than I could.
After a few seconds, I found
myself trailing behind while
the giant fish — yes, the whale
shark is a fish, the largest fish
in the world — disappeared
from sight.
In the pre-swim briefing, they
taught us the basic signs.
One arm in the air if you
need help. Wave both hands if
you’re drowning.
Swimming back to the boat, I
raised my right hand and made
an ‘O’ sign with my index finger
and thumb. Total success. I’dPink paradise: Sunset at
the Sal Salis Ningaloo
Reef beach safari campPictures: TOURISM WESTERN AUSTRALIA / OXFORD SCIENTIFIC RM/ JEFF ROTMAN / GETTY / LESLEY WILLIAMSON / ALAMY