Ashmore Reef

Ashmore Reef and Cartier Island is an Australian external territory. One of eight - Australian Antarctic Territory, Macquarie Island, Heard and MacDonald Islands, Norfolk Island, Coral Sea Islands, Christmas Island, and Cocos Keeling Islands are the others. Most are uninhabited and difficult to get to. The purpose of this trip, for me, was to see the territory. The fact that it went to a lot of other amazing places was fantastic and the reason I chose this cruise.

Today we visited Ashmore Reef. In the morning we snorkelled in the reef. As usual, I didn’t take any pictures while snorkelling. Every single person, no matter how much snorkelling they’ve done, said it was the best snorkelling they’ve ever done. The water was clear, the coral was absolutely enormous (brain coral the size of a truck), the variety of coral was staggering, and it came in so many colours! Then there were all the fish! And clams. And stingrays. And everything else. It was just fantastic.

This afternoon we went around West Island and looked at the bird life. There were turtle tracks of at least three different species of turtles, and we saw several in the water.

There were birds in abundance. Our bird expert was beside herself.

And there was a poor Indonesian fishing boat.