Two weeks in Western Australia

By Laura Docherty, UNSW, Australia

Yesterday I got back to Sydney from an incredible 2 week road trip in WA, from Margaret River to Coral Bay. We used Camplify to rent a car with two rooftop tents and flew to Perth to pick up our new home for the next fortnight! We had planned out our route before leaving Sydney to try and fit as much in as possible but when we arrived we heard there was a tropical cyclone warning near Exmouth so had to change our plans a little – wind gusts were up to 45 mph and we were sleeping in tents on the top of a car so you can imagine how well we slept…

Our first few stops were Lancelin sand dunes and the Pinnacles desert, both of which are landscapes unlike anything I have seen before; it felt like we were on the moon! Each night we chose between booking a campsite with warm showers and power, and free camping in remote car parks in small coastal towns. Free camping is legal in Australia but the rangers will ask you to move on at 7am if you’re not up and out (which we learned the hard way). On the second day the first disaster struck when we were driving through the outback with no service at 110 kmph and one of our rooftop tents popped up. After pulling to the side of the road and trying unsuccessfully to call for help, we ended up flagging a nice man down from the side of the road who used duct tape to secure the tent. The trip was off to a great start!

Following this small mishap we continued up the coast to Hutt Lagoon pink lake, saw dolphins at Monkey Mia and visited shell beach – one of only two in the world entirely made of shells! One of my favourite things about WA are the sunsets; after being on the east coast in Sydney for so long it was amazing to finally be able to watch the sun go down over the water in the evenings. The next few days on the Ningaloo Reef were some of my favourite of my year abroad so far because I was finally able to swim with sharks! We booked a manta ray ecotour in Coral Bay and went snorkelling on the reef, seeing turtles, sting rays, grey tip reef sharks and a 3.5m tiger shark! Unfortunately the waters were too murky to see the mantas, but I think the sharks made up for it!

This is where we decided to turn around and head south again due to the cyclone warning and head to Margaret River. Evidently the universe thought we had had too smooth a trip, so gave us a dead battery on the side of the road just south of Perth. Out of the 5 of us nobody knew how to jump start a car, so we opted to wait for an RAC man to help us rather than cause any electrocutions so close to the end of the trip. After he restarted the battery (which took all of 5 seconds) we had a great final few days in Margaret River, going to a waterfall, a vineyard and some natural rock pools before returning the car back to Perth and checking into an AirBnB for our final few nights. We spent one of these days on Rottnest island – which I would recommend to anyone visiting Perth. We cycled around the island all day, stopping off for swims at some amazing beaches with incredibly clear, freezing cold water.

This trip was nothing like I’ve ever done before but has made me so excited for our next road trip! Overall we drove 3500 km, swam with 7 sharks, got bitten by about 6000 bugs and had roughly 4 hours of sleep – all in all an amazing experience.