Epic Round The World Trip Adventures! Stunning Photos & Articles - A fascinating gap year travel journal covering every stop of their journey.

Go to content

Main menu:

Epic Gap Year Travel Adventures! - Stunning Photos and Articles! – This page is all about Carnarvon, West Australia on our round the world trip.

Stop 2 - W. Australia > North Of Perth > Carnarvon & Quobba

Carnarvon - West Australia
Gap Year Travel Journal

Text By Jo and Pix By Mike

(8th - 10th February) Carnarvon
We left Geraldton on 8th February and drove 500km back up north again to Carnarvon. Situated by a palm fringed estuary, lovely for prom walking along the waters edge, after a lazy coffee. The only other thing of note was a one-mile long jetty here with a railway track running the entire length. Apparently this was the first place in the world where live animals were loaded onto boats to be shipped down the coast to market (usually they travelled across land). The river that joins the sea here had virtually dried up – like they all have in Western Australia at this time of year! But we walked onto the river bed and saw black swans, also the trees were full of white cockatoos. As Mike walked toward them they scattered – the noise was deafening as they all screeched warnings!

Quobba Beach
Just north of Carnarvon we went off the main highway by 50km to the blowholes and a remote beach called Quobba. For those of you who know the west coast it is just by the “King Waves Kill” sign at the turnoff for Gnaraloo. There are flat sheets of rock here that jut out into the sea. As the sea comes in and underneath the rock it sends up a jet of water into the air through holes in the rock – quite impressive – much like a geyser. We were there on a small wave day so the plume of spray must be much higher when the king waves come in. Fishermen have been killed here by mighty waves sweeping them off the rocks. 1km further on is Quobba – this consists of a campsite that has no facilities at all apart from a bush loo (much like the composting toilets at Studland!). Since we are so off season here it was almost deserted – quite unsettling and eerie. We spent the night free camping here – miles from anywhere - at night, with no ambient light at all from street lamps or houses, the sky was as black as black could be. We’d forgotten how many more stars you see down here and the milky way was clear as anything. The beach here was the main attraction and had been described as the perfect snorkelling spot for beginners since it is a natural lagoon, sheltered from the waves and only waist deep in water. The next morning after Mike’s investigatory swim he encouraged Jo to go in and try it. This was the first time for her to snorkel with coral reef and fish – time to put all that practice in the Poole Dolphin swimming pool to work. And it paid off, the reward was amazing – brightly coloured corals of all shapes and sizes and multicoloured fish buzzing about. Shoals of tiny electric blue ones, little stripy black and white ones, parrot fish, box fish, clams and urchins with long black spikes. After three snorkel sessions that day, we spent an hour sat on the beach watching a huge osprey nest built on a rock and saw the ospreys hunting for food – couldn’t see if there were any eggs or chicks in the nest though. Mid afternoon we had to tear ourselves away from this surreal place, and head up the coast, loved it, really unique.

(16th February) Quobba - Second visit
On our drive back down to Carnarvon via Quobba we saw bush fires in the distance – huge plumes of smoke drifting across the sky and as we got closer we could see they covered a vast area of the bush. Just glad the road didn’t head that way! We stopped off at Quobba again on the way back down – just couldn’t resist another snorkel there. To the right of the bay it was quite cloudy but the left was much clearer and we saw many fish – the best thing about snorkelling here is that there are little sandy gaps between the coral where you can stand and just watch the communities of fish just going about their business – you can hear them pecking at the coral and they swim in and out of it. We saw a huge brain coral in the shape of a doughnut and a plume of plate coral that looked like a helter skelter. The water was warmer than Coral Bay – it was like a bath.

Gap year travel journal from our round the world trip

Click thumbs for fullscreen view

Carnarvon, West Australia - Gap Year Travel Journal

Quobba Beach, Carnarvon, West Australia - Gap Year Travel Journal

MAP - Quobba Beach, Carnarvon, West Australia - Gap Year Travel Journal

Highlights of our gap year travel adventure: