WHALES, WINE AND WILDFLOWERS
GENE Hardy emerges from the underwater limestone ledge, a mask-and-snorkel-wearing hunter with a spiny crimson West Australian crayfish gripped in his gloved hand. And that’s when he sees the great white shark.
“A big one, 10 metres away, and it scared the crap out of me,” enthuses Gene, the founder of Cape To Cape Explorer Tours (CCET), a Margaret River-based company with 11 years specialising in hiking adventures on the Cape to Cape Track, which is embedded in Leeuwin-Naturaliste NP of WA’s rugged southwest. “I swam so fast I just about walked on water!”
We’re perched on a granite boulder after a swim in a gorgeous coastal rock pool named The Aquarium for its effervescent water and teeming fish. It’s day two of an 8-day guided hike traversing the 124km coastal and forest wilderness that is the Cape to Cape Track, a 3hr drive south of Perth. Pink-flecked granite boulders shelter The Aquarium from the waves – and sharks – of the Indian Ocean. “But that’s where I ran into the great white,” Gene tells me, pointing just out to sea and describing his freediving expedition several years ago.
