Exmouth 2025

Nicks Camp to Osprey Bay - Ningaloo Coast - 21st to 26th May

Nicks Camp

We thought Nicks Camp was great. When we arrived we were greeted by thousands of flies, pretty normal for a place like this as it is on a working cattle station.

But they took it to another level!

When the Camp Hosts came over to great us, he was talking to us with about 30 flies crawling all over his face, eyes, ears, mouth. The full treatment of fly face massage. It was giving us the creeps just talking to him. His response was "You get used to them!".

Well there's no way we'd ever get used to that!

Jayne particularly hates them in her ears! Alan just hates them everywhere.

But the thing that brought us undone was the moths at night. The flies finally started to go away at 6.05pm, but the moths started coming in at 5.55pm! So there was about a 10 minute overlap where we had both.

The first night we had those big moths. They were bad enough. The second night was zillions of little moths as well as the big ones. They were relentless.

We had to take refuge in the van both during the day as well as at night. Talk about rough and rugged Australian outback. Forget about Australia having 7 of the worlds top 10 most poisonous snakes, and 4 of the top 10 of the worlds most poisonous spiders, not to mention crocs and other dangerous things, it's the little critters that you have to worry about!

While Alan was washing up, he had all these guys watching him, everyone of them wanted to get inside our van.

To go to bed, we had to shut the main door and to do that Alan had to go outside. The screen door looked just like this windows screen. So we turned off all the lights inside our van, and left one light on outside.

Within 5 minutes Alan was able to go outside in relative safety to shut the main door. But the light outside was insane!

Talk about moths!

We later learnt that the moths had only just hatched, the conditions must have been perfect for moth birthing. They were all up the coast from about Carnarvon to Exmouth. About 400kms of coast line, but don't know about the inland areas. We found this out after chatting with a guy sitting next to us at Whalebone Brewery who went through exactly the same problem, but somehow knew about the life cycle of the local moths.

Yes it looks lovely, doesn't it?

Nicks Camp is part of Warroora Station. We couldn't get out fast enough!

After leaving we had to inflate the tyres. Fly veil is mandatory for such activities

Exmouth

Going from Nicks Camp to Exmouth we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, so we are now officially in the tropics.

We both like Exmouth, so cutting two nights from Nicks gave us 2 extra nights at Exmouth. No problem with that!

Fresh Exmouth prawns and Guiness. Yum!

We had a very enjoyable 4 nights in Exmouth. Without a fly or moth to be seen at any time. We started on an awful dusty site, but were lucky enough to spy a lovely empty grassy spot which we moved to for the next 3 nights. The caravan park has a caravan/car/boat wash bay, so after washing everything down, we moved to a much nicer site.

We had dinner at the Whalebone Brewery twice, and fish and chips at Blue Lips another night. Better to dine out while we had the chance. The next 7 nights are at Osprey Bay. Not a coffee shop within cooee of there.

Osprey Bay

Osprey Bay is one of the camping areas within the Cape Range National Park, not far from Exmouth. It's also the best, and therefore the hardest campsite to book in Australia. The WA Parks open bookings exactly 180 days prior and at midnight WA time. Which meant we had to get up at 3am to try to book a site. We did this on 4 occassions without success. We saw the sites we wanted come up at 3am but by 1 second past 3am they had gone. We clicked on it we missed out in every case. It's got to be the worst booking system anywhere.

A week or so after we had given up getting a site, we were sitting around our pool and Jayne just happened to check Osprey Bay and there was a site available for 7 nights. So she ran upstairs and managed to secure it.

And here we are! We can see the beautiful turquoise water 50 metres away from our camp chairs , or walk to the beach for a swim or snorkel. We can also drive to one of the many other snorkelling sites within the park.

When we tell people we've got 7 nights at Osprey Bay they all ask - "How did you manage to get that!?"