May 2023. I borrowed Dad's boat for the trip. The plan was ten days at Ningaloo — long enough to stop watching the clock and actually be there. Emily came too, my fiancée, small enough to look slightly comical holding a full-sized fishing rod off the side of a boat.
That detail becomes relevant.
Getting There
The drive north from Perth is the kind of distance that makes you honest about whether you really want to be somewhere. Exmouth is 1,250 kilometres up the coast. By the time the Minilya turnoff is behind you and the highway straightens for the final stretch, you have committed. There is no quick version of this trip.
May is the right time to go. The heat has backed off, the weather is stable, and the roads north are not clogged with school holiday traffic. We arrived with the boat and found friends already set up nearby, which made the whole thing feel easier from day one.
Out on the Reef
Ningaloo on a boat is a different trip to Ningaloo from the shore. You get past the reef line and into water that most people camping in the park never reach. Water so clear it almost looks fake the first morning out there.
Early starts every day. Flat water, the sun not yet over the Cape Range, coffee on the way out. By mid-morning the wind picks up and the reef gets a bit of chop, but by then you have already put in four or five hours. You work the reef until you feel like heading back. Then back to camp, sort the fish, eat something, and do it again tomorrow.
That was the pattern for ten days. It is a good pattern.
I was catching fish. Emily, who had not done a lot of fishing before this trip, picked up a rod and started paying attention.
The Fish
Anyway. Back to the fish.
I do not know exactly what she hooked or how long the fight went. What I know is what came over the side of the boat.
It was bigger than Emily.
Not slightly bigger. Taller than her, properly. The photo says it better than words can. This small person holding a fish that dwarfs her, grinning like she had been waiting all trip for exactly this moment. She had outfished the rest of us on a reef we had been fishing for years.
There is not much to add to that. She caught the fish. We watched her catch it.
The Trip
Ten days is long enough for a place to stop feeling like a destination and start feeling like somewhere you actually live for a while. The routine settles after the first couple of days. You stop planning and start doing whatever is next. Camp, boat, reef, back to camp. Repeat.
Good friends around camp, I had the boat in the water every morning, and the weather held the whole time. Nothing went sideways.
Worth saying too. Ningaloo in May is not a secret, but it might as well be. Most people go in spring or during school holidays when it is warmer and more crowded. May gets you the same water, the same reef, and a lot less company. It is the better version of the same trip.
Wouldn't Change a Thing
That is my honest answer when someone asks how it went.
I have been on trips where something comes unstuck and you spend the drive home running through what you would do differently. This was not one of those.
Emily caught the biggest fish. I was right there when she did. Good friends, borrowed boat, ten days at Ningaloo in May. Hard to improve on.
We will go back.