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itself and the fish clean out of the water, giving me a bit of an aerial show. Later, while I was having dinner, I was entertained by dugongs diving for the seagrass at low tide, much better than anything I could have found on the TV.
    A dugong is roughly the size and shape of a large dolphin, but with a less streamlined head and no dorsal fin. It’s the only herbivorous mammal that is strictly marine; their closest aquatic relatives are the manatees. Amazingly, dugongs are more closely related to elephants than to marine mammals such as whales and dolphins.
    Seeing my first dugong was something I had been eagerly anticipating. Encountering new wildlife was a major reason for my trip. I was travelling through a part of the world I’d never been to and was seeing some of the wildlife for the first time. Dugongs, sawfish patrolling the shore, strange-looking dolphins and many sorts of fish were all new and exciting to me.
    Next day I found that Searipple Passage emptied of water at low tide. It wasn’t long, however, before the tide was rushing back in to flood the rocks, making it a passage again. As the tide flowed in I drifted towards rocks that retreated under the water as fast as I was advancing. I wasn’t the only one making the most of the free ride; there were turtles, small sharks and many fish moving in as well. It was as if I was floating over my own giant aquarium, watching animals working in harmony with the tides.
    A few kilometres further on I found myself at the port of Dampier and was faced with huge jetties, boat traffic, railways, harbours and mountains of muddy brown iron ore and stark white salt waiting to be fed into the waiting ships, all of which were impatient to sail off with their little part of Australia. It was a real contrast to drifting over a reef bustling with wildlife a few hours earlier.
    After moving away from the evidence of mining I really enjoyed the 200-kilometre stretch from Dampier to Onslow. There were so many islands scattered around you could hop between them with no need to land on the coast. Most of the islands were only a kilometre across, with perhaps a few low trees cowering from the winds in small clumps as far from the sea as they could get. Surrounded on all sides by friendly beaches and with good camping, the islands were just calling for a visit.
    Another reason I was happy to leave the mainland for the first of the islands was because I’d been plagued by flies. But several of them decided to come along for a ride. After a day’s paddling I was down to three flies and felt a bit responsible for their predicament. There were no flies on the islands, so I know my three didn’t go too far from camp. In the morning there was only one, so I left a small pile of my breakfast for it. On reflection solo paddling has a bit to answer for.
    Apart from my three flies there was plenty of wildlife around the islands to keep things interesting. Little sharks sporting their fin tips out of the water, sawfish shuffling along in the shallows, fish jumping 3–4 metres out of the water, and rays and turtles casually cruising. Some islands looked a bit like bombing ranges with all the turtle nests dug out of the beaches.
    This was one of the most pleasant sections of the entire trip for me. Tailwinds helped me bounce from island to island for some noodles and a rest. It was trouble-free kayaking, except that most of the islands were so low-lying you couldn’t see them until they were only about 5 kilometres away. And, because my GPS had a hissy fit and froze, I was navigating with a compass and topographic maps that didn’t detail the location of the islands very clearly. But there was no real danger if I got it wrong, apart from a dent in my pride, so I enjoyed going back to the basics of navigation. Finding a particular low-lying island the size of two football pitches after paddling for six hours is satisfying and a great reward at the end of the day.
    I have a love–hate