In April 2005 after a liveaboard trip aboard Super Sport, Eve and I flew from Cairns via Brisbane to Perth. And there we began a 1,270 kilometre drive north to Exmouth. 

To break up the journey we planned several detours, the first to The Pinnacles in Nambung National Park, one of Australia's best known landscapes where thousands of huge limestone pillars rise from the stark yellow sand landscape. We then stayed overnight in the Jurien Bay Motel Hotel, 250 kilometres north of Perth. The next morning we made my way to the Jurien Bay harbour. Many months earlier I had pre-booked a place aboard Hot Tuna with Jurein Charters. This catamaran takes divers from Jurien Bay to the sea lion colony of Essex Rocks, seven kilometres south of Jurien. Unfortunately for me no other divers were interested in diving with sea lions that day and so Hot Tuna had instead been chartered by some fishermen. There being no other boats to take me to Essex Rocks to dive with the sea lions, Eve and I left Jurien Bay rather earlier than expected! The freedom of driving on Western Australia's traffic-free roads soon cheered me up. We had no accommodation pre-booked for our second night on the road but as we had passed plenty of motels, this did not seem a problem. After a late lunch in Geraldton, we resolved to book into a motel a little further north. But after Geraldton we drove along the seemingly never-ending North West Coastal Highway without seeing any buildings let alone any motels. Stopping briefly we were quickly driven back into our hire car by flies and continued on. Finally as it began to get dark and the risk of a collision with kangaroos increased we reached Billabong, a two building “town". The Billabong Homestead is the only motel between Northampton & Carnarvan and fortunately for Eve and I, had a spare room for us.

After a memorable evening spent chatting to our hosts in the outback, we set off the next day for the relatively short journey to Shark Bay and the bottlenose dolphins of Monkey Mia. These dolphins have come to expect a free meal and turn up at their allotted times to be fed by rangers. Pelicans stalk the beach as though vying with the dolphins for attention. The only dive centre in Shark Bay is “Powerdive Monkey Mia”. Powerdive did not have any scuba tanks or conventional dive equipment although this was expected to be available later in the year. Instead they offered me the "PowerSnorkel". This is an Australian designed and made electric “Hookah” system which provides air. It is a free floating unit with a self-contained battery which floats above the divers. Long hoses feed air to the divers. One system can support either two divers to 6 metres depth or one diver to 12 metres. During our three day stay at Monkey Mia there was only one days diving possible. Eve declined to join in but I could not resist. And the day out gave me a chance to try a different form of diving. The Powerdive safari coach took our small group from Monkey Mia to the World Heritage Francois Peron National Park. After passing the old Peron homestead we travelled through the Australian outback on red sand tracks and across salt pans to our dive site: Gregorys. Apparently Tiger Sharks can be found in this area but I tried not to think about that! Everyone else had elected to snorkel so the Powerdive zodiac inflatable twice dropped me off for a couple of shallow solo dives between two sections of reef in visibility of about 8 metres. Highlights of the dives were Batfish, Stingrays, Pufferfish, Lionfish and on the surface a Turtle and Dolphins.

The next day Eve and I left Shark Bay and set off to Coral Bay in the central region of Ningaloo Reef for the next leg of our 2005 Australian holiday.