CORAL COAST COMMERCE
LOCATION AND CONTEXT
The North West Cape projects from Western Australia’s coast into the glistening Indian Ocean, its seaward shore fringed by the World Heritage Ningaloo Reef, its lee side lapped by the shallow, balmy waters of the Exmouth Gulf. At the northeast tip of this sun-baked limestone peninsula, 1,270 kilometres north of Perth, is the regional outpost of Exmouth. As the provincial capital of the Ningaloo Coast, Exmouth is the administrative centre of a shire spanning 6,200 square kilometres and the service hub for thriving regional industries that include tourism, oil and gas, fishing, aquaculture and pastoralism.
The region basks in a semi-arid climate, with pleasantly mild winters but scorching summers when daytime temperatures often exceed 40°C. There are no specific wet and dry seasons and rainfall can vary from one year to the next, usually associated with monsoonal storms between January and April. Tropical cyclones are occasional but severe – on 22 March 1999, category-5 Vance made landfall near Exmouth, delivering the highest wind gust ever recorded on the Australian mainland (at 267 km/h) and causing major damage.
