Adventures out west

This post is a few days late due to adventures in Western Australia, courtesy Cyclone Narelle and the recent Australian Romance Readers Association Romantic (ARRA) Rendezvous in Perth.

“West” has exciting connotations. It conjures up “wild west” cowboys and frontier towns, with all their opportunities and hardships. “Go west, young man.” “Go west, older woman?”

In Australia, as in the US, the west was the last part of our island continent to be settled/invaded by white people, in 1826. It’s the world’s largest supplier of iron, and also exports gold, gas and rare earth minerals.

It’s huge (just over 2.5 million square km or just under a million square miles) and hosts only 3 million people, so tourism is another big industry, with a major drawcard Ningaloo Reef, the largest fringing reef in the world, largely unspoilt, offering opportunities to swim with whale sharks, manta rays and more. The Ningaloo Marine Park is home to more than 300 species of coral, more than 700 species of reef fish, a thousand species of algae, 600 species of crustaceans, 655 shell species and 155 kinds of sponges!

When we decided to pair our trip out west to ARRA with a visit to Ningaloo at Exmouth, and the chance to swim with whale sharks up to 12 metres or 40 feet long and manta rays almost as large, we had no idea this part of Australia is sometimes called “cyclone alley” and that the cyclone season officially runs from 1 November to 30 April.

As a sailor, my husband and hero is addicted to weather apps. We arrived in Exmouth in balmy breezes and sunny skies. While I sat back in the midday heat of 39 degrees C (102 Farenheit) and worked on the next Brighton Court novel, he scrolled through his selection of forecasts and began to worry.

The beautiful floral configuration I saw on his screen was actually Cyclone Narelle, tracking across the top of Australia and down the other side, towards us, expected in Exmouth exactly when we were due to fly south to Perth for the ARRA event!

While locals live with the reality of cyclones and know how to do their best to secure their homes, boats, businesses and bodies, we knew our flight would be cancelled and we’d miss the ARRA event we’d traveled west to attend.

We were able to snorkel off a couple of local beaches (then cringe when we saw a photo on the front page of the local paper showing a huge shark bite out of a local’s surfboard), admire the canyons, witness the greatest display of stars I’d ever seen and visit the excellent local museum and aquarium for a potted history and to peer at exquisite sea creatures, but our reef tour was cancelled due to the stiffening winds.

Reluctantly, we rebooked our flights to Perth two days early, fortunately securing the last two seats on the only plane out.

Tragically, the cyclone hit Exmouth and Ningaloo, with predictably devastating results. My heart goes out to those affected. The airport is still closed, the windows broken and power out, and the beaches are scattered with multitudes of dead sea creatures.

Please download your free copy of House of Diamonds if you’d like some escapism!

Perth was wet but safe, and we enjoyed the art gallery, botanic gardens and walking past beautiful homes ahead of the Australian Romance Readers Association Romantic Rendezvous which I’ll cover in my next blog.