Exmouth

Exmouth sits at the tip of the North West Cape in Western Australia and serves as the main gateway to the Ningaloo Reef and Cape Range National Park. Where Coral Bay to the south is tiny and remote, Exmouth is a proper town with a full range of services — making it the ideal base for exploring one of the most spectacular stretches of coast in the country.

The Ningaloo Reef is the main attraction. This UNESCO World Heritage fringing reef runs right along the coast, and the snorkelling is world-class — much of it accessible straight from the beach. Turquoise Bay, inside Cape Range National Park, is one of the most famous snorkelling spots in Australia: a gentle current carries you effortlessly over vibrant coral gardens teeming with fish, turtles, and reef sharks.

Exmouth's signature experience is swimming with whale sharks. These enormous but harmless filter-feeders gather at Ningaloo between roughly March and August, and Exmouth's tour operators are among the most experienced in the world at finding them. Using spotter planes, tours position small groups of snorkellers in the water beside these gentle giants — an encounter regularly rated as a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Between roughly July and October, humpback whales migrate past the cape, and Exmouth is one of the few places where you can join a humpback swim tour. Manta rays are present year-round, and the waters here are also rich with turtles, dugongs, dolphins, and countless species of fish. The Navy Pier is regularly rated one of the best shore dives in the world.

Cape Range National Park, on the peninsula's western side, offers a completely different landscape — rugged limestone gorges cutting through arid ranges. Yardie Creek Gorge, with its sheer red walls and resident black-footed rock wallabies, is a highlight, and there are excellent walking trails and remote campsites throughout the park.

The contrast between reef and range is what makes Exmouth special: in a single day you can snorkel a coral reef in the morning and hike a desert gorge in the afternoon. Turtle nesting season (November to February) adds another draw, with green, loggerhead, and hawksbill turtles coming ashore along the coast.

Exmouth is remote — around 1,250 kilometres north of Perth — so most travellers reach it as part of a Coral Coast road trip or a dedicated Ningaloo adventure. Dundee Adventure's tours take care of the long-distance logistics and include the reef and gorge experiences, so you can make the most of this remarkable corner of Western Australia.