Trip Summary

Today we were at sea all day, going to Fremantle, where the trip will end. It’s time to reflect upon what I’ve done and seen.

This isn’t normally the time of year I’d plan to visit the places where I’ve been. It should have been the wet season, and everywhere was hot and humid until we reached Houtman Abrolhos where it was very windy. On Cocos (Keeling) Islands, I was the only tourist until the next plane came in on Tuesday. Being somewhere at completely low season makes life a bit difficult for a solo traveller because a lot of options aren’t open, and tour companies need a minimum number of clients to be able to make any money, so even the things that are open can be difficult to experience. Sure, we had a huge storm for the entire cruise down the coast, but this isn’t really the time it should have been run because it’s normal for that type of storm to occur at this time of year. The Western Australian coastline around Broome and the Pilbara is one of the most cyclone prone coastlines in the world. And the timing of the cruise dictated the timing of the visit to both Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island.

However, the heat and humidity wasn’t as bad as I expected. The wet season was very late, causing the red crab migration to occur just before I went to Christmas Island. In fact, I went to Christmas Island at exactly the best time - the crab migration was finishing, so I saw it (not quite in its full glory), and the roads gradually opened, so I could see all the other things on Christmas Island as well. Not many people manage to time their visit so perfectly. And I was there for Chinese new year. It’s much more popular in the dry season, when diving is better, but I don’t dive. The crabs prefer high humidity, so I went at the right time of year to see them. Christmas Island was amazing, and I’m really happy I went. I would have preferred to stay for two weeks.

Cocos (Keeling) Islands were fantastic too. However, I think I would have preferred to stay in different accommodation with proper air conditioning (because all the windows had no glass, the air conditioning had a tough time working). I liked seeing all the crabs, but it would have been better to visit a few weeks later, when everything was starting to happen. It would have been nice to stay here longer too.

The cruise was good. Everyone was nice and the crew did a fantastic job. However, it was billed as the Coral Coast, and we missed out on seeing much coral at all. We were supposed to visit two world heritage areas, but really didn’t see much of either of them. We missed out on visiting almost all of the sites of historical significance. We visited only four places on our itinerary. I expected that I would see all the things I had wanted to see between Broome and Perth, but I’ll need to come to this area again to visit those things. So it’s a bit disappointing.

We’re landing in Fremantle tonight rather than tomorrow, as the storm is still with us. This is sunset.

And this is the storm following us. Note there’s a rainbow in amongst the sunset colours.

Houtman Abrolhos - Easter and Pelsaert Groups

The Abrolhos is made up of a lot of small islands, often covered in the fishing shacks of crayfishers.

Amongst them is Little Sandy Island, the northernmost home of Sea-lions in Australia.

The island is very small, and we weren’t allowed to stand on most of the island, so that we didn’t disturb the sea lions, as they are quite endangered. There were about ten here, a fifth of the population in Western Australia. 

The wind was horrible, spraying us with sand. It felt like a very uninviting place to be. There was also a current, so we couldn’t snorkel very far either. However, once we got into the water, there was the best coral we’ve seen this trip (because of the weather we’ve missed all the good coral locations).

And the juvenile sea lions are very inquisitive and love swimming around snorkellers, but I didn’t venture out past the shallows, so I didn’t see them.

Afterwards we visited Post Office Island, where we were shown around a shack and the crayfishing operation and pearling operation a family has on the island.

Later there was a pretty good sunset.