This great barrier reef is an elite snorkelers secret with whale sharks and a luxury safari camp

Every grade schooler knows that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest.The stuff of Attenborough doc legend, it’s also one of Australia’s biggest draws, attracting 2.4 million travelers to its vast marine park last year. But across this island continent, more than 2,100 miles away (about the same distance from New York to Los Angles as the Airbus flies), there is another vast, unspoiled reef that we doubt your 7-year-old knows much about.

It doesn’t see millions of international tourists — in fact, barely 200,000 people visit in a given year.There aren’t grand luxury resorts, either.Aussies in caravans and intrepid backpackers pitching camp constitute society — with one bright exception (more below).Here, in the rugged Outback in Western Australia’s north, the red desert meets the sea, and in the main town of Exmouth (pop.

2,486) emus wander the main street, hunting for French fries outside (and sometimes inside) the local pub.This is the Ningaloo Coast, a World Heritage Site with 160 miles of aquamarine reef waters.Unlike its “greater” cousin a world away off Australia eastern coast, which requires a flight to an island and then a cruise to access, Ningaloo reef hugs the landmass.

It’s known, to the extent that it is known at all to those outside Australia, for its whale sharks.Each year, from March to August, hundreds of these docile filter-feeding mega-sharks cruise to these rich waters to feed, giving visitors a chance to snorkel alongside.

But humpback whales, large rays, a plethora of turtle species and more minute aquarium delights are as plentiful. In Ningaloo, you’re closer to Jakarta than to Sydney, and the lack of development, the dearth of pollution, the wonderful isolation, has preserved its reef to an extent that can rarely be found today in the dredged, commercialized, bleached-dead elsewhere.If ritzy reefs of the Maldives, Polynesia, and Belize are the black-tie events of snorkeling, then the waters o...