Gascoyne

Pull up at Monkey Mia on a calm Shark Bay morning and watch wild bottlenose dolphins wade into the shallows to be fed by rangers as they have for decades — one of Australia's most famous and genuinely moving wildlife encounters. But Shark Bay, the World Heritage-listed bay that frames the Gascoyne coast, is far more than Monkey Mia.

Hamelin Pool shelters the world's most extensive living stromatolites — columns of living microorganisms that are some of the oldest life forms on Earth, identical to those that oxygenated our atmosphere 3.5 billion years ago. The Francois Peron National Park, on the red-cliffed peninsula that divides the two bays, is one of WA's finest four-wheel drive destinations — remote cape camps overlooking turquoise water, dugongs grazing the seagrass below.

The Gascoyne River flats behind Carnarvon grow tropical fruit in the middle of an arid landscape — bananas, mangoes, tomatoes and capsicums from red river sand. The town's famous fruit is sold from roadside stalls and eaten in quantity. The offshore fishing for coral trout and red emperor is among the best on the WA coast.