https://www.facebook.com/104481311554177/

Big Rex Adventures

Home
Australia
Gold Coast, QLD
Big Rex Adventures

Follow Mel and Bill on our adventures to see some hidden, and some not-so-hidden, Aussie gems.

14/12/2023

📍 Cape Range National Park

After our tour with Ningaloo Discovery we rocked up to this beach a few kms north of the Tantabiddi Boat Ramp to see hundreds of turtles getting it on 🫣😆

Around October each year this beach becomes a turtle love fest before the females make their way up the beach to lay their eggs from December.

There was a sign near the beach saying to keep 15m away from the turtles, and we were originally going to swim here, but quickly discovered there were so many turtles that 15m was impossible! We also didn’t want to disrupt their sexy time so we stuck to the shore and looked on from the drone.

Nature is incredible!

11/12/2023

📍 Exmouth

After a couple of relaxing nights at Onslow we took off on the 4 hour drive to Exmouth. Our mission for our 2 night stay in Exmouth: swim with humpbacks and see emus.

A few kms south of Exmouth we drove up Charles Knife Road where we had breathtaking views of Charles Knife and Slothole Canyons. Truly impressive!

We arrived in Exmouth and had a swim at Town Beach which was beautiful and calm before the northerlies picked up. One of the cool things we’ve noticed in WA is you can drive on most beaches and no permit is required. This is not the case in Qld.

We topped up our food and drink supplies and headed to Ningaloo Caravan and Holiday Park. The park had nice bathroom facilities, a nice enough pool and a restaurant. Getting to know our camp neighbours we found out they had seen emus walking through the park but we didn’t see any 😔

The main event for our stay at Exmouth was the Ningaloo Shark Swim and Eco Tour on a Catamaran with Ningaloo Discovery.

Ningaloo Discovery had free pick up but we chose to meet them at the Tantabiddi boat ramp. The tour had a max capacity of 20 due to the WA whale swimming rules so the boat wasn’t too crowded.

On this tour we saw so many things we hadn’t see before - false killer whales (big black dolphin-like animals), flying fish - plus we finally swam with Humpback whales and mantas! 🥳🥳 The most amazing thing we saw was a sail fish. A very rare sight. The onboard staff had never seen one before.

Swimming with the whales was a surreal moment but one that happened quite quickly. They have a spotter plane tracking the whales and when instructed we had to jump in the water and swim very quickly and get in position. The whales then changed course and we had to swim back the way we came. After a few goes of this we stuck our heads in the water and WOW! What beauties! There were 3 whales: baby, mumma and, at the bottom, what they call an es**rt. Of course, in all the rush, the GoPro decided to not work so we have no footage 🤦🏼‍♀️😭 but the onboard photographer took some amazing shots. Note: you need to be a confident and competent swimmer to swim with the whales.

After a couple of hours in the open ocean we headed back to the reef and had a swim in the crystal clear blue water. Such a breathtakingly beautiful spot where we saw lots of fish and turtles.

It was a truly amazing day out and we highly recommend this tour. And, if you needed another reason to go on this tour, after a couple of days they email you all the photos from the day, for free! Many of the photos in this post were taken by the talented Ningaloo Discovery photographer ✨

Note: we didn’t see any emus in Exmouth (but somewhere on this trip we saw heaps - stay tuned!)

👉🏼 Next: Cape Range National Park

27/10/2023

📍 Onslow

As mentioned in the last post, Karijini was like a boiling pot (with a few thousand flies) so we got a last minute reservation and high-tailed it to Ocean View Caravan Park where we nabbed a beachfront site 🚗💨.

The campsites all had artificial turf which was a nice reprieve from the red dirt 💯 and they had a newish amenities building. Mel also spotted a few Sturt’s Desert Pea plants in the campground… she’s obsessed with their little cute faces 🤓

Not much to do in Onslow 💆🏼‍♀️ so Bill got to enjoy a couple of days of Mel not dragging him around from place to place 😆. It was still quite (very) hot 🥵 (40+) but we could dip our feet in the ocean to cool off and even went to the local pool ($4 entry). We also popped into the Onslow Beach Club for a refreshing beverage 🍹.

If you search for Onslow on the socials, a regular photo will be the Anzac memorial. This is right next door to the campground and is in the perfect spot for a sunrise photo except… someone decided to put a fence right behind it 🤦🏼‍♀️ which gets in the way of the shots… nothing photoshop can’t fix (later) 💫

Onslow is known for its salt production and there is a really long jetty with a pipeline to load salt onto ships. On the way out of town Mel captured some pretty cool abstracts with the drone. We love a good abstract! 💯

On the drive in/out of town there is a termite viewing platform as there are a sh*tload of termite mounds on the way in and they are huge!

Onslow was one of Bill’s fave stops on the trip. Have you been to Onslow?

👉🏼 Next: Exmouth

22/10/2023

📍 Karijini National Park

From Hamersley Gorge we headed to the Weano Recreation Area in Karijini NP to do some walks.

First thing we noticed were the flies 🪰🤢 so on went the fly nets and we headed off on the Upper Weano Gorge walk (1hr return, class 4, not hard) and checked out the Oxer and Junction Pool lookouts.

It was spectacular scenery, but we just weren’t feeling the place - a combination of the flies, heat and no way to cool off - so, it being late in the day, we checked into Karijini Eco Resort, headed for the bar at happy hour and looked up WikiCamps for somewhere on the coast where we could swim… Thankfully we lucked out with getting a beachfront site at Ocean View Caravan Park in Onslow for the next two nights! 🥳

The next morning we admired the incredible scenery at Mt Bruce / Punurrunha which is Western Australia’s 2nd tallest mountain - 1234m high. You can climb Mt Bruce but it was very hot and the ocean was calling us so… we didn’t 😆

👉🏼 Next: Onslow

19/10/2023

📍Karijini NP/Hamersley Gorge

This was going to be a big day so we got up at 5am and enjoyed watching the sun rise from the car as we started the 432km drive south to Karijini National Park via Hamersley Gorge.

📷 We made a few stops along the way for Mel to take some shots of the interesting landscape which included some huge road trains.

⛽️ We also stopped at the Auski Roadhouse to fill up. Auski was 263km into the drive and the first fuel station we encountered. We highly recommend filling up here as fuel stations are scarce. They’ve obviously been ripped off a few times because you have to hand over your licence before they release the fuel and get it back once you’ve paid.

From there we hit the unpaved road to Hamersley Gorge and the scenery really started to change.

Once you arrive at the gorge there’s a designated car park, with toilet facilities, and from there it’s a short steep walk down a mostly natural staircase to the main part of the gorge. This was a great spot to have a swim and cool off from the hot temperatures 🥵.

For the more adventurous you can scramble up the gorge a little bit, swim across a swimming hole and climb up into the famous spa pool. We wore our boat shoes (or you might call them reef shoes) which made it a bit easier as it was slippery at times and Bill had to drag Mel up into the spa pool on her tummy. It wasn’t glamorous 🫣 but she made it 🥳

We had heard you needed to get here before 10am to have the spa pool to yourself but we arrived after 10 and managed to enjoy it for quite a while by ourselves 💆🏼‍♀️💙

If you’ve heard of the spa pool before, it’s exactly like the photos - absolutely stunning.

👉🏼 Next: Karijini NP/Karijini Eco Retreat

14/10/2023

📍Port Hedland

From Eighty Mile Beach we started the 260 km drive to Port Hedland in our RedSands Campers “Steph”.

Not much to see along the way but, with the help of Google Maps, Mel did find some cool salt ponds to photograph with the drone. It was a bit off the beaten track, and we did have to engage the 4wd 😆, but how cool are the shots? We’re probably going to get one or two printed on canvas for our house.

We rolled into Port Hedland and headed to The Hedland Hotel for a bevvy before checking into Discovery Parks Port Hedland. The Hotel had great views and pretty funky wallpaper in the bathrooms 🦩.

Not much to see in Port Hedland but you could head to Marapikurrinya Park to watch the big cargo ships come in as it’s the largest iron ore port in Australia. Otherwise, it was a good place to rest our head for the night.

👉🏼 Next: Karijini National Park

11/10/2023

📍 Eighty Mile Beach

This was the day the adventure really started!
We picked up our camper from RedSands Campers, got some supplies and started our 3 week road trip south to Perth.

There’s not much to see between Broome and Eighty Mile Beach so we only made one stop on the 377km / 4 hour journey and that was at the Sandfire Roadhouse.

The car was telling us it was 41c outside and boy did we feel it when we arrived at Sandfire. The heat coming out of the red dirt was 🥵🥵🔥🔥 But that’s ok, Mel had plenty of peacocks to keep her occupied 😳🦚😆 They also apparently have a camel on the premises 🤔

A further 45km down the Great Northern Highway we turned off for the 9km unsealed road to the Eighty Mile Beach Caravan Park where we stopped for the night.

It’s a great little park that has lovely grassy sites although not much to do here as swimming at the beach is not recommended 🐊🐊 The tide was out so we spent the afternoon walking along the beach and watching a beautiful WA sunset.

ℹ️ One thing we have noticed is you can drive your car on most beaches in WA and no permit is required.

👉🏼 Next: Port Hedland

07/10/2023

📍 Broome

From Perth we flew up to Broome for two nights before we picked up our camper.

We picked up a 4x4 from Thrifty and checked into our accommodation - Kimberley Sands Resort - which was a great place to base ourselves. The room was beautiful and their pool was fabulous for cooling off after a hot day.

Here’s a few things we got up to:

✨ We don’t know about you but when we think of Broome we think of the camels at Cable Beach so on our first afternoon we headed there for sunset. Mel lucked out with a postcard-perfect shot of the camels silhouettes and sunset 🙌🏼🐫🌅

✨ One of our fave things was a visit to Coconut Wells. During spring tides (9m +) the water spills over the sand dunes at the entrance to the lagoon and it fills up with beautiful blue water. Check the tide times and about 1.5 hours before high tide start the trek to the lagoon entrance and lazily float back to the car pack. We’ve included two aerial photos taken 1.5 hours apart. The first one shows the lagoon just before we started the walk to the entrance, the other is just after we finished the float.. what a difference! Note: the small car park can fill up very quickly so get there early.

✨ Simpson Beach. This is the place for those iconic Broome shots with the red sand, blue water and green mangrove bushes. This was a must visit for Mel 🧡💙💚

✨ Gantheaume Point. Interesting place with neat rock formations. Keep a look out for the “dinosaur prints” 🦖😆

✨ As luck would have it we happened to be in Broome for the famous “Staircase to the Moon” - a natural phenomenon when a full moon rises over the tidal flats of Roebuck Bay and occurs 2-3 times a month between March and October. So we rocked up the Mangrove Hotel in anticipation for the moon rise… as our luck would have it, there was too much cloud and no moon rise 🤦🏼‍♀️😆 We still had a fab time listening to great music (Groovylips Arts and Music), eating yummy food and we met some lovely people, so not a complete bust.

👉🏼 Next: we pick up our camper and head to Eighty Mile Beach

04/10/2023

📍 Fremantle

Here’s a few snaps from our stay in Fremantle. We only stayed 2 nights - mainly to visit Rottnest.

Special shout-out to the crows who relentlessly attacked Mel’s drone 💥😆 No incidents 🙏🏼

Next: we fly to Broome

03/10/2023

📍 Rottnest Island

Following on from our previous post about the quokkas…

To get to Rottnest Island (or affectionately named Rotto) we based ourselves at Fremantle at the lovely Be. Fremantle and caught the Rottnest Express for the 30mins trip to the Island.

🎫 Total cost was $216.85 which included return tickets, bike hire and Rottnest Admission fees for two people.

There are other tour operators but we chose this one. We can’t remember why (maybe because their boats are red? 🤷🏼‍♀️😆) but we found them to be great.

Arriving at Rotto we immediately started our ride around the island, stopping at various spots to check out the insanely beautiful views! Absolutely breathtaking 💙🩵🫶🏼

One thing we’ve never read about is how hilly Rotto is! Gotta say if we never see another push bike it’ll be too soon… sore legs, sore arms and sore butts!!

We therefore only made it about a quarter way around the island.. it is a lot bigger than you think!

If you want to see more of the island in a day trip we’d recommend hiring an e-bike or catching the bus. The buses run very regularly and you’d be able to walk the next day 😆😆

To have the full Rotto experience, another option would be to stay a few days in the various levels of accommodation. Note that accommodation is only available for booking 6 months in advance and is super popular and books out pretty quickly!

Have you visited Rottnest Island? Did you go for a day trip or stay on the island?

Rottnest Island, Western Australia

01/10/2023

📍 Rottnest Island, Western Australia

So we’ve arrived on the west coast for a month long adventure!
First thing on the itinerary was Rottnest Island to see the gorgeous quokkas 😍
The island is a lot bigger than we expected and if you want to really see the whole island you probably need to stay there (plenty of accommodation options) but we just went for a day trip.
The most important thing for Mel was to get a famous quokka selfie 🤳 🤣
The little cuties are not hard to find as they just hang out wherever there is food!

ℹ️ Remember: don’t feed or touch them

✅ Quokka selfie

More info on Rottnest Island to come…

11/09/2023

Have you even been to Bali if you don’t go to the Monkey Forest Sanctuary Ubud? 🙊

I’d read lots of info about the monkeys being aggressive and naughty but if you just read the rules (and follow them) you shouldn’t have a problem. Worth the visit if you’re in Ubud but I wouldn’t make a special trip.

If you’re near Uluwatu just go the temple. There were just as many monkeys there.

Here are a few of my fave shots 😍

🎫 Entry IDR 80.000 (A$8)

25/03/2023

Croc feeding at Wildlife Habitat Port Douglas 🐊 with Big Al and Ton. Big Al is getting on in years and you might notice that he is missing most of his 🦷!!!

12/03/2023

I don’t like Mondays…
•
•
•
•
•

26/02/2023

📍Reflections Holiday Parks Terrace Reserve, Brunswick Heads, NSW

The weather was looking good for the weekend so we decided to go to Brunswick Heads and, extra bonus, lucked out with a waterfront site! ☀️💙

Being just over an hour from our home on the Gold Coast, Brunswick Heads was the perfect destination on a hot summer weekend as it has heaps of beautiful swimming places to choose from: Simpsons Creek, Torakina Beach and Brunswick Heads Main Beach.

The town also has heaps of dining options so we didn’t actually cook one meal 😂 The Fish Club van rocked up Friday night at the park so that was dinner sorted and then we went to Hotel Brunswick on Saturday night which has great meals and loads of live entertainment.

Mel was also a bit obsessed with the numerous water dragons that live in the rock wall right in front of the campground. They were very photogenic 📷🤓

Special shout-out to the lovely people we met Monique, Kirsty, Rosco and Brigette 👋🏼

NB: the creek is tidal. At low tide the creek turns brown from the freshwater upstream but, rest assured, at high tide the water is a stunning blue 💙

A bit of campground info:
🛻 2WD accessible
⛺️ All camp types welcome
🏊🏼‍♀️ Plenty of beautiful places to swim
🎣 Fish right out the front. Saw some big flathead 🙌🏼
🔌 Powered/unpowered
🚽 Great amenities
🪣 Laundry facilities
🍳 BBQs areas
📱 Telstra 4G/ Optus was sketchy
🐶 No pets allowed
💲 $82/night premium powered 2 people
🌐 https://reflectionsholidayparks.com.au/parks/terrace-reserve

Visit NSW Byron Bay

13/02/2023

Happy V-Day ❤️
We all know that Uluṟu is the heart of the Red Centre, but on our last visit I found the heart of the heart of the Red Centre 🫶🏼 Got it 😉
It’s easy to find. Just look up to the right when walking to the Mutitjulu Waterhole 😍
•

30/01/2023

📍 Neurum Creek Bush Retreat, Qld

Last week we travelled 1+hrs north of Brisbane to spend 4 nights with family and friends at Neurum Creek Bush Retreat.

It’s a huge property located on Neurum Creek with large sites that allow for decent space between neighbours. It's also a great spot for a large group.

All-in-all a great weekend of 🥰 quality family time, 🥵 hot weather, 💦 lots of swims, 🌄 beautiful sunsets, 🌁 misty mornings and plenty of interesting wildlife around. We saw goannas, kookaburras, wallabies, turtles and a gorgeous kingfisher which was hanging out at the creek.

💡 Tip: take the reef shoes

A bit of campground info:

🚗 2WD accessible
🏕️ All camp types welcome
⛺️ Tents available for hire
📈 Some sites aren’t level. If you have a van maybe phone and check first before booking a site.
🏊🏼‍♀️ Swim in Neurum Creek
🛶 Bring the canoe to use in the creek
🔌 Mostly unpowered but some powered available
🚿 2 amenity blocks
🚽 Drop toilets in amenity blocks + other drop toilets located around the campground. They can be a bit of a walk so if you have a camp toilet it would probably be worth taking
🚰 Creek and rainwater only (boiling rqd)
🛒 A few items to buy at the office
🧊 Ice available to purchase at office
🎞 Movie nights at the Shady Shelter
🚴🏼‍♀️ Plenty of tracks so bring the bikes for the kids
🕷 If camping near a big tree, watch out for the drop spiders at night
🤳 Telstra 3G with sketchy 4G
🔥 Fires allowed (wood available to buy)
🐶 Dogs allowed
💲 $14.50/night/adult plus one-off $7 site booking (standard rate). Children/Dogs extra.
🌐 https://www.ncbr.com.au/

Experience Somerset

23/01/2023

Note to self: empty the pockets BEFORE entering the drop loo cubicle! 🎣💩🤢

Address

Gold Coast, QLD

Website

facebook.com

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Big Rex Adventures posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Big Rex Adventures:

Videos

Neighbourhood Watch President reporting for duty #australia #aussieas #kangaroo #goldcoast #reels #reelsinstagram

No fake audio. No filter or edits. Nothing but nature for the first post of 2023. How’s the serenity at Cranky Rock? 💆🏼‍♀️🫶🏼🧘🏼‍♀️

It’s official! Out of office is on! 🥳💆🏼‍♀️🥂 #outofoffice #vacation #vacationmode #holidays #reels #reelsinstagram

There’s no place I’d rather be 💙#whitsundays #whitehavenbeach #beach #visitqueensland #australia #hillinlet

Cycling the Uluṟu base walk

Cycling the Uluṟu base walk with Outback Cycling - Australia Northern Territory – Australia Explore Uluru Australia.com Parks Australia #uluru #ulurukatatjutanationalpark #northernterritory #RedCentreNT

Wow! What a way to celebrate our 21st wedding anniversary! Our first time in the Red Centre and a special shout out to Ayers Rock Helicopters and our pilot Jack for helping to make the day so special 🥰🥂 Northern Territory – Australia Parks Australia Australia.com

Another amazing day on K’gari 💆🏼‍♀️💙✨

Another amazing day on Visit K'gari - Fraser Island #kgari #fraserisland #kgariisland

World Turte Day 2022

Happy World Turtle Day! All of these amazing encounters were at Heron Island Visit Queensland, Australia Australia.com

Gould Memorial Drive

Gould Memorial Drive, Victoria 💛 Located near Marysville, and about a 2 hour drive from Melbourne, Gould Memorial Drive is a sight to behold in early Autumn when the gorgeous poplar trees turn a vibrant yellow. #gouldmemorialdrive #visitvictoria

Earth Day 2022

E A R T H 🌏 D A Y | 2 0 2 2 A selection of our amazing experiences in the past year on this planet 😍🙌🏼💙 #EarthDay2022 #EarthDay