Red Earth Safari tour, Perth to Exmouth!!

Sorry for the last week of silence, we've been very much in the middle of nowhere with no internet access or phone reception! It's been lovely!
Last Monday we started our week tour with red earth safaris. We were picked up extremely early in the morning to begin the adventure! The first day took us up to Cervantes- a very very small town on the east coast, where we had our first swim in the aussie ocean. On our way up here we stopped in Yanchep national park where we saw koalas, wallabies and explored some caves. In the evening we drove up to Nambung national park to see the Pinnacles at sunset. They were not at all what we expected, these strange pillars covered a huge expanse and looked a bit like the surface of the moon!
Tuesday was pretty cool, we went to an animal rescue centre where we held Jack the cutest joey you've ever seen! We also fed some very hungry kangaroos :) Our afternoon saw us leaving Australia and entering The Hutt River Province, here we had the pleasure of meeting Prince Leonard and Princess Shirley, and tried to understand the politics behind the loophole they'd found to create their own country!(Which in reality is just their farm!) Very excitingly we did get entry and exit stamps in our passport, stamped by the prince himself! From here we travelled to Kalbarri, stopping for a bit of whale watching on the way.
The next day was another fun early start...saw our first spider (safely in its web!) on our steep descent down into the gorge of Kalbarri National Park.  This seemed completely out of place after the reeeeaaally long roads with nothing but flat landscape around but was really worth the hike...even if some bits would have felt safer with a harness!! After this we headed to Shark Bay Heritage area where we went to Shell beach...yes completely full of shells but thankfully no sharks yet! In the evening we went on an aboriginal tour - 2 hours sitting around a toasty campfire under the light of the full moon whilst we cooked freshly caught fish directly on the hot coals (Lizzy ate it too!). Throughout the evening the guy told us about the aboriginal traditions of the area and played the didgeridoo for us....very cool!!
The Thursday was meant to involve meeting dolphins at Monkey Mia (where they normally arrive 360 days of the year)..we managed to turn up on the week they were choosing not to arrive - according to our tour guide this had only happen twice before in the time he'd been coming!! typical! Anyway, it didn't matter we headed off to the Hamelin Pool Stromatalites - weird rock things which give off o2 in beautifully clear waters. From here, we had a long long drive into the outback were we were due to stay at an old sheep station. The guy who owned the land loaded us into the back of his Ute and drove us down to his private beach in time for a swim and to watch the sunset. As we got back to the station we noticed the moon rising...it was huge with an orange glow, in fact kind of looked like the sun was rising in the night sky! We got marshmallows round the campfire that night...tasty..and survived the night with no threat from big spiders :) Was incredible waking up in the middle of nowhere!
Friday...first stop was the tropic of capricorn which we'd been camping right near to before heading to Coral bay, where the Ningaloo Reef begins. It was stunning. We spent the day enjoying the sunshine and spent plenty of time snorkelling the reef watching brightly coloured fishys and a turtle cruising around...loved it! From here we travelled to our final destination, Exmouth (that's Ex-Mouth...not Exmouth like we were saying it!!) and spent the next day snorkelling on the reef again down in Turquoise Bay where we had a close encounter with a shark! Tiff was completely unaware as it swum behind her but Lizzy, who was more scared of meeting one let it glide by without being alarmed...we did see a few turtles and some more fishys and the coral was pretty cool too!! On our way back our tour guide knew just the spot to go and see some humongous turtles as they were coming in to mate on the beach...i still can't quite get over how huge they were, we thought the ones we'd seen snorkelling were big!!