Two weeks in to our trip, it was time for a little bit of r&r. We left the Cape Range National Park, drove round the headland to Exmouth, refuelled, looked at the new marina that's being built there (it will be very posh in a few years' time), then drove south and west to Coral Bay.

Coral Bay is a tiny little place - it doesn't even have a post code, how about that? - right at the other end of the Ningaloo Reef. Rainnie had lived and worked here for a couple of months some ten years ago, and she was VERY excited about going back there, because she had such good memories. And I don't blame her: it's a gorgeous place!

We found ourselves a spot in the caravan park right opposite the beach, then promptly went for a snorkel off the beach. Suddenly, after a fortnight of manic driving, it felt as if we were on holiday properly, with no stress, nothing to make us leave. It was really quite relaxing!

In the afternoon we walked right along the beach, round a small promontory, and on along the next beach. There we found what we were looking for: a small lagoon filled to bursting with baby reef sharks! It was just too cute seeing all these sharks swimming in the shallow waters between the sandy beach and a bar of coral.

The rest of the day consisted of a spot of shopping, a bit of coffee drinking, and generally not much at all.

Monday was a bit more active. We had booked ourselves two scuba dives with the local dive operator, and had to be there at eight in the morning to set off. We were driven slightly south of Coral Bay to the new jetty (the bay onto which the beach gives is a marine park, with restricted boat traffic). The plague of flies that had descended on us as we embarked was gradually blown away by the wind as we set out to sea, and we settled in for a bit of a cruise.

The diving was phenomenal! We saw lots of fish, lots of sharks, lots of corals, and had lots of fun. Both dives were great, but the second one just had oodles of sharks, including two huge grey nurse sharks. Sadly, the underwater camera that we bought that morning packed up after the first dive so we didn't get many shark photos. The lady in the shop kindly swapped our leaky one for a new one when we got back, and we used it the next day when we were snorkelling.

In the evening we walked along the beach in the other direction, enjoying a massive sunset and watching the rocks & sand change colour with the progression of dusky hues in the sky. That evening Rainnie worked on her university assignments some more and I finished reading the Somerset Maugham book I started in Thailand.

On Tuesday we had a delicious morning snorkel (with underwater camera) and saw SO MANY snapper! After breakfast we did some internet & stuff, had some lunch at the bakery where Rainnnie had worked all those years ago (where we ran into the lady from the turtle sanctuary and her kids again), then prepared to leave Coral Bay heading south along the coast.

We were barely out of Coral Bay when a series of little tornadoes started up inland from us and spiralled red sand and dust up across the highway. In fact, a particularly big one managed to splatter rubbish all over the sensor of my camera, which meant that all my pictures from then on have an annoying speckle pattern across them.

Our first stop was Carnarvon, where we refuelled, went to the post office for Rainnie to send some postcards, and then left again. It wasn't really a particularly interesting town, but it had a nice enough waterfront. The most remarkable thing about the place was that it was the last time I saw a bend in the road for 40km!

In fact, the highway just south of Carnarvon is ridiculously straight. There were only three bends in the next 100km of driving. It's quite bizarre when you see the road you're on stretch to the horizon behind you and in front. The Romans couldn't have done better.

The straightness of the road was aggravated by the heat of the day and the monotony of the countryside in these parts. It was difficult to shake off the torpor that tried to grip me at the wheel. Thank heavens for music!

Where the road started to get bendy again, the land changed to become more hilly. We left the main highway and headed up a steep rocky driveway to watch the sun set from atop a barren outcrop, the wind whistling through a cairn of dusty rocks and whipping our hats from our heads, then pushed on into the night in an attempt to reach our next destination.

In fact, we didn't quite make it all the way to Monkey Mia, deciding that we were just too knackered to continue. It was a strenuous drive for Rainnie avoiding all the bunnies, kangas, cows & sundry creatures great & small. We pulled up in a layby and slept, hoping that dingos wouldn't eat us in the night.

Wednesday was another day for incredible experiences with nature. We started the day at Shell Beach, a beach that is composed literally of one kind of shell. The sea at Monkey Mia is hypersaline and very few kinds of sea creature can live there. As a result, the shells that get washed up on the beach are are almost all from one species. These shells get compacted down by various processes and form a kind of stone that was mined by early settlers to build their houses.

After Shell Beach we drove further up the narrow isthmus to Eagle Bluff, from where we had amazing views over the huge underwater meadows of sea grass that are much bigger here than anywhere else on earth. Dugongs, animals a bit like manatees, live here and feed on the grass. But more about them later...

We stopped in Denham for coffee, then drove on to Little Lagoon, a, well, little lagoon. We naughtily drove along the compacted white sand beach of the lagoon for a bit, because it was so beautiful. Then we continued to Monkey Mia. At the campsite there we got a spot really close to the beach. We parked up, got changed, and had a quick soak in the supershallow waters before heading to the jetty for a boat trip.

It wasn't any kind of boat trip. This was a dugong expedition on a converted racing catamaran. The two-man crew were hilarious, and got a few of us to volunteer to help hoist the rigging. Rainnie & I of course volunteered, just so we could get some cool photos of ourselves working the boat.

The trip lasted three hours, and in that time we saw a couple of turtles and DOZENS of dugongs!! They look like a bronze-coloured cross between a dolphin and a sealion. The crew/guides said they very rarely saw as many as we did that day. Normally they might hope to see two or three. But we just kept on seeing dugongs, singly as well as in mother-and-daughter pairs. It was awesome!

Back on shore we realised just how much sun we'd caught on the trip. There was just enough time to do a spot of internetting and get changed, then we headed back out on the same boat, this time for a sunset cruise. This was rather different to the afternoon trip. Where the waters had been extremely calm earlier, now the seas were getting really quite choppy. And the crew were loving it! They sped up and aimed for waves with the express intention of getting the passengers soaked.

After the first big soaking, one of the crew came around handing out waterproof jackets, but to be honest it was too late. We were all absolutely drenched. I was lucky my camera didn't get soaked too; I managed to slip my bag inside my coat literally a second before the next monster wave came crashing over the side.

With the sun setting, we came back to shore an hour after setting off. It was getting really windy and we were very cold. We'd arranged to do an Aboriginal evening walk but were wondering whether we could face it. The wind was getting really quite strong! Thankfully, the other people booked on the walk were also unkeen, and even the guide said it wouldn't be a great night for it. So instead we arranged to meet him the next morning.

The night we spent at Fortescue River roadhouse brought a new experience for us: Cold. It was hot when we parked up, but the wind got steadily stronger through the night, and when the darkest hour came (which is just before dawn, as any Mamas & Papas fan will know) it was actually bloody cold in the campervan! I never expected to have to crack out the sleeping bags we were given in Darwin, but we did for once.

On Friday morning we refuelled, refilled the water tank, and set off. But we stopped about twenty metres down the road because the Fortescue River was breathtakingly beautiful! In all the desert dryness we'd been driving through since Broome, criss-crossed only by dried-up river beds, it was delightful to see free-flowing water, lush trees and flocks of birds. A photo stop was obligatory.

About 100 metres later we had to stop again, because a kestrel was sitting posed on a small tree by the road. We just had to take more pictures. And 1km down from the bird, we saw a huge goanna making its way slowly across the highway. We pulled over to take some snaps, and saw another car pull up behind us.

Thinking they were going to take pictures too, we headed over to them. But in fact the Aboriginal people in the car had quite a different plan for the goanna: one of the two ladies who got out told us they were going to catch him and eat him. She promptly started sharpening up a big piece of scrap metal that happened to be lying at the side of the road.

A guy got out of the car then carrying an air rifle. The goanna defiantly stood his ground despite being surrounded by three humans, legs straight and neck up, but there was nothing he could do about the gun. As soon as he was hit, the other lady quickly grabbed him by the tail and swung him through the air, smashing his bleeding head on the tarmac. She proceeded to break both his back legs, just to make sure he couldn't get away. But to be honest I think he was already a gonner.

We got back in the van and carried on driving, somewhat stunned by the proceedings with the goanna. The day was full of experiences. And it wasn't even nine o'clock yet!

We turned off the main highway and took the road heading north to Exmouth, which was our next destination. As if responding to the diminished status of the road, the trees in the fields either side of us shrank to more of a bush landscape. It was quite a weird, flat, undulating terrain that put me in mind of Mars actually. Clearly, the heat was getting to my head!

Exmouth is at the northernmost extremity of the Ningaloo Reef, the second-biggest tropical reef in Australia. It was fitting then that we started our visit to this reef with an encounter with nature: just as we pulled in to the tourist information office in Exmouth, we were approached by our first emu of the trip. It was alone in a big field that backed on to the car park and walked right up to us to give us a good long look with its big eyes. Emus are quite large actually.

After refuelling we drove north out of town and saw a small beach at the top of the peninsula, then headed up to the lighthouse which stands on a small hill. From there we saw whales out in the distance. So, for today, that's kestrel: tick; goanna: tick; emu: tick; whale: tick. Wildlifetas-tick!

We drove round to the western side of the peninsula, into the Cape Range national park, and had lunch on a very very dusty beach with very thirsty kangaroos begging us for scraps. The wind had picked up again, and was whipping sand and dark red soil into my eyes and all through the camper. Everything got pretty filthy pretty quick, even though we left that beach as soon as we'd eaten.

Our next stop was Turquoise Bay, where we had our first snorkel on the Ningaloo Reef. The water was bloody cold, but very clear, and the reef promised to be very exciting. After a while in the water, we got out and dried off. Rainnie spent a while repairing her camera and then we went about finding a place to camp for the night. We ended up (after seeing lots of kangaroos and an echidna) at Osprey Bay, a little further to the south, where we had dinner and then turned in.

Saturday morning proved to be much more clement than the previous day. The sun was strong, and the wind had died down. After breakfast we took an early morning stroll along the gorgeous, deserted beach which lay just behind the parking bays for campervans. In the hour-and-a-half that we were walking, we saw just one other couple.

Next we headed back to Turquoise Bay, this time opting to do the drift snorkel out in the sea rather than stay in the safety of the bay. It would have been perilous yesterday, but today the seas were much calmer and the deeper waters cool but inviting. The snorkelling was FANTASTIC! We saw countless fish big & small, and the icing on the cake was a white tip reef shark that swam lazily past us.

We took lunch in the heat of the day, and I got a very noticeable tan line across the tops of my thighs just from sitting outside the camper eating our pasta salad. After lunch we snorkelled in the bay again just for fun, then made our way slowly north, checking out some of the other beaches in the park and heading for a beach just outside the park that was reputed to have turtles looking to lay eggs.

But first we decided to fill our water tank at the one and only bore hole in the park. There was another camper already there, but they soon left, which meant we had the whole spectacle to ourselves: it was a wildlife free-for-all!! Clearly, this is the only regular source of water anywhere in the area, and don't the animals know it! There were dozens of kangaroos and dozens of emus hanging about, waiting for a human to turn the tap on and let out some precious water onto the ground.

Rainnie & I took a gazillion photos, knowing that we would rarely if ever again get this close to this many animals in the wild. It was intense! Rainnie was stood at the tap, and kangaroos were hovering to her left with the emus to the right. There were two biggish pools at her feet, one quite shallow which suited the lapping tongues of the kangas, and one quite deep which suited the beaks of the emus. I had to think of Aesop's fable with the wolf and the crane.

One kangaroo was even so bold as actually to lick Rainnie's foot! We swapped places after a while, but the animals were a little shier of me. Perhaps it was because I was that little bit bigger. But the photos and video footage are absolutely magnificent. Wow. Wow. Wow.

So we pressed on to the turtle sanctuary beach and got there just in time for sunset. We also soon stumbled across a huge green turtle in the process of hauling herself up the beach and into the dunes, to dig a hole for her eggs. It was weird to see this giant of the sea struggling exhausted on the beach, so out of her element.

There was a human mother and her two kids already ensconced behind a couple of rocks, watching, so we joined them. It turns out the mother is from country Victoria. She clearly felt she had a rapport with us, because at one point she upped and left us with her daughter for about half an hour!

The wind really picked up as the sun went down, and it was actually quite chilly that night. We cooked ourselves up some tofu satay noodles, then headed back to Ned's Gully, a beach we'd found that day, to park up and sleep. What a day it had been!

Having narrowly escaped death in the desert the day before, it was somewhat ironic that we only narrowly escaped death in the deeps that night! Yes indeed, folks, we managed to park BELOW the tide line! We had wondered what that wooden barrier was for as we parked up against it in the dark, but we didn't give it a second thought.

It was the next morning that we saw the dried watermark lines on our tyres, and realised that had the tide been any higher we would have been sat with a flooded engine or - worse still - a flooded campervan.

So it was with a feeling of relief mixed with foolishness that we lied through our teeth (well Rainnie did the talking; I pretended to be asleep) to the Ranger who came to tell us we were camping illegally. For it was he who pointed out our near-brush with the Indian Ocean, as he was telling us to move along.

We moved along - eventually. But first we allowed ourselves the luxury of an early-morning dip in the waters that had so nearly carried us off. The Pretty Pool was indeed pretty: an inlet from the sea that bent in a right-angle, the end of which was next to where we'd parked. After a swimette, we sorted ourselves out some breakfast, then drove up to the toilet block back up by the road for a shower and to do the washing up.

We drove into the heart of Port Hedland just so I could experience yet another side to Australia: Industry. Port Hedland can't claim to be a pretty town, but what it lacks in beauty it more than makes up for in majestic purposefulness. The harbour is enormous (huge coal barges are filled here; Australia's busiest coal railway ends at the docks). The piles of salt, sand and ore are gigantic. And the town revels in this industrial reputation, styling itself "ore-some!"

It took us a while to find an acceptable coffee, but even that was to be had here. I'm guessing the majority of people in this town don't give a toss about the finer points of coffee roasting. At least, they look like guys who've got better things to think about, strutting around in their high-visibility workwear and helmets, or driving their big white 4WDs, each emblazoned with the name of one of the great companies in Australia's mining & minerals industry: BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, and their ilk.

We watched a video about coal transportation in the visitors' centre, because there were no tours running at all that day and they couldn't offer us anything else to do. Then we went down to the port to watch a boat pull out, but it didn't. So we left and headed on west, stopping for lunch at Point Samson, a delightful lookout with a small coral reef.

We decided to have the first snorkel of our trip here, in the next-door bay called Honeymooners Cove. The oyster beds were treacherous to walk in over, but the water wasn't too cold and it was delicious to be out of the heat of the day. As we showered afterwards, we got chatting to a married couple who qualify as my first "grey nomads". These are people who've decided to sell up their house, buy a seriously luxurious camper truck, and travel around Australia for a few years. It's a growing phenomenon here in Australia for people to do that.

We drove through the afternoon until we reached Karratha, another mining boom town. Instead of going into the town itself, we refuelled and then drove up onto the Dampier Peninsula. There we saw our first outback traffic jam. It was insane! A kilometres-long snake of white 4WDs interspersed here and there with a white bus carrying workers heading home to Karratha for the evening. But where were all these people coming from?

We followed the traffic to its source and discovered, tucked away behind some hills, Australia's biggest LNG terminal, the North West Shelf. This quite simply blew the socks off any other industrial site I've ever seen. It was gargantuan! Row upon row of shiny chimneys, huge storage caverns, giant buildings, and the biggest pieces of machinery just lying around. And because we'd got there after home time (it was just gone five in the evening) the place was deserted.

After staring agog at this temple to raw material exploitation for about half an hour, we drove away again, but instead of heading back to civilisation we took a side dirt road down to the coast. From there we had stunning views of the sun as it set over the gas facility. We also saw kangaroos hopping through the bush. It was a queer juxtaposition of two worlds that I would never have thought could exist side by side like that.

We left Dampier Peninsula, went back to the main road, and continued westward. It was dusk now, so we had to keep our eyes peeled for stray wildlife and cattle. In fact, we had a very near miss with a huge cow once it was completely dark. For the next few minutes we were picturing to ourselves what the van would have looked like if we'd hit the cow.

And then, a few minutes later, in a bizarre twist of fate, we were flagged down by two guys in one of the ubiquitous white 4WD vehicles who had just hit a cow! Even though their ute was fitted with roo bars, it was totalled by the impact. Worse, the cow's head wrapped round the side of the car when it hit and destroyed the passenger side door. The guy sat there was lucky to escape unharmed.

We took a load of photos of their wrecked car, then gave them a lift back to their camp. It was interesting to talk to them about the work they're doing up here. Both of them are from Melbourne, and just working on contract for a few months as electricians, installing huge transformers for a monster gas project.

We dropped the two boys from the "cow car" off and headed on into the night, surviving a few more near-misses with kangaroos. It was past eleven when we finally pulled up at the Fortescue Roadhouse, another of these pubs-cum-petrol stations in the middle of nowhere. The federal government of Australia subsidises these outposts heavily, because without them it would be impossible to travel across this country.

Anyway, we arrived and everything was shut, but there happened to be a chap sitting on the front step. Which was bizarre. He told us he was waiting for a friend who was arriving on the bus, and that he worked in the kitchen. As we couldn't track down the manager of the place, the kitchen guy told us we should just park up in the campsite and worry about registering/paying the next day. So we did just that.