Cape Range National Park and Ningaloo Marine Park

Exmouth,  Western Australia

'Destination Ningaloo', The Sydney Morning Herald

...I join WestTreks' Neil McGregor for a four-wheel-drive safari into Cape Range National Park, which covers much of this peninsula.  McGregor is an expert on the region's flora and fauna and is full of stories about explorers such as Phillip Parker King, whose ship was becalmed in Exmouth Gulf in 1818.  He takes us across an area called the "Desert Museum" north of Exmouth.  Here we visit a large cave with sweeping ocean views, surely once considered prime Aboriginal real estate, and discover a soft-quilled echidna sleeping soundly.

Later we enter the national park's Shothole and Charles Knife Road canyons.  These limestone gorges, formed between 7 million and 10 million years ago as the ocean receded, are dramatic in scale, stretching right across the cape, plunging up to 200 metres and encompassing huge rock out crops.

'Business', Sunday Times

The 1990's have been good for Rhonda and Neil McGregor, owners of a company that runs environmentally friendly boat and safari tours in WA's Cape Range National Park.

The couple has claimed four awards for its Yardie Creek Tours and WestTreks Safari Tours in the past six months.... One of this year's accolades is the prestigious Telstra WA Small Business Development Corporation awarded for the Gascoyne region in the category of a business with fewer than 10 employees.

The McGregors, with their boat tours running up Yardie Creek and four-wheel-drive safari tours crossing North West Cape have always had a strong desire to protect the environment of their area.  They delight in showing tourists the rich bird and animal life along the way.

"Tour business scoops pool at local awards", Northern Guardian [extracts]

Businesses throughout the region competed in five major categories including primary industry, manufacturing and construction, retail and service, and tourism.

Yardie Creek Tours and WestTreks Safari Tours scooped the pool, winning the Tourism Award, Business of the Year Award, and Telstra WA Small Business Development Corporation Regional Award.

Today, Earth 2000 - Everyone's a Winner [extracts]

WA had big and small winners at this year's Banksia Awards, Australia's premier Environmental Awards.  Western Power won the Environmental Business Practice Award.  At the other end of the scale Exmouth's Yardie Creek Tours took the Eco Tourism Award.  It was one of four awards that husband and wife Neil and Rhonda McGregor won in the space of a week.

 Destinations - "They opened the door to a special place" [extracts]

Honour came the way of the McGregors in June when they were named Business of the Year at the Skywest Airlines Gascoyne Business Awards evening at the Fascine Lodge in Carnarvon.  The couple's two business - Yardie Creek Tours and WestTreks Safari Tours - won on five counts:  (1) Strength in business planning and management   (2) Consistent commitment to customer care   (3) Steady increase in customer numbers since 1989  (4) High standard of occupational health and safety  (5) Consistent entrepreneurial endeavour...

A day out with the McGregors begins in Exmouth, some 90 kilometres from Yardie Creek, when visitors climb aboard the OKA coach for the start of the safari....

What they get is an expert commentary on the history of the place and the wildlife.  And "expert" is an appropriate word to use here..