On Australia’s west coast, Journey Beyond’s Sal Salis Ningaloo Reef is a low-impact eco-luxury safari camp set between the dunes of Cape Range National Park and the UNESCO-listed Ningaloo Reef. The property’s 16 wilderness tents are designed to blend into the landscape and sit just meters from the ocean, giving guests immediate access to one of the world’s most accessible fringing reefs.
From the beach, guests can snorkel straight into coral gardens alive with marine life including turtles, manta rays, reef sharks, and seasonal whale sharks. The experience is deliberately low-impact, with a strong focus on conservation, minimal infrastructure, and protecting the surrounding marine and desert environment.
On the east coast, Journey Beyond’s Reefsleep and Reefsuites offers a completely different kind of immersion; overnight stays on and beneath the Great Barrier Reef itself. Guests arrive on a pontoon in the heart of the reef, where day visitors depart in the late afternoon, leaving a rare sense of stillness across the water. in the late afternoon, leaving a rare sense of stillness across the water.
With Reefsleep, guests sleep on the open-air pontoon under the stars, surrounded by the sounds of the ocean and reef at night, with exclusive access to sunrise and sunset reef experiences once the day boats have gone. Reefsuites takes it further, offering underwater accommodation where guests sleep below the surface in fully submerged glass-walled suites, watching marine life drift past their bed throughout the night.
Together, these experiences offer two very different expressions of Australia’s reef coastline — one remote and low-impact on the edge of the desert, the other fully immersed within the Great Barrier Reef itself. Both focus on proximity to the marine environment and a more meaningful way of experiencing the ocean, rather than simply viewing it.
