28th of October - 31st of October: Shark Bay - Monkey Mia
(Marc Writes)
Sorry for taking so long to update this but to be brutally honest we've had better things to do
Anyway after leaving Kalbarri we drove straight upto Shark Bay to see 'Flipper & Friends'.
Shark Bay is a World Heritage National Park and is home to the famous Monkey Mia Beach Dolphins....amongst other stuff! It's a really beautiful area and one of only 14 World Heritage sites in the entire world that meets all four of the required 'Natural' criteria for listing. So the dolphins...well the deal is that these bloody dolphins and their offspring have been turning up at this same beach, 3 times a day for the last 30 years...they are so punctual that it is believed that they can actually read the time from the clock which hangs on the wall of the beach cafe...."punctual my Arse"! We waited 2 hours on the beach, elbowing fellow tourists out of the way in order to get in position for the arrival of the dolphin crowd. Eventually they were spotted so the park ranger comes along and stands knee deep in the sea delivering strict orders of how we are not to splash, move, shout, step out of the straight line that she had us form along the beach with military precision and last of all under no circumstances were we to touch the dolphins....wow we were so happy that we got up at 7.30am to be here! The dolphins then swim in to the shore and people are chosen at random to take a dead fish from a bucket and drop it in the mouth of a waiting dolphin....if I was a child I would have cried with disappointment after such a wait....so that was that!
Monkey Mia itself is in fact a really nice little resort with nice clean beaches and free campground....well when I say free what I actually mean is that you can sleep in your van in the car park (not really alllowed) and then sneak into the neighbouring backpackers/Campsite kitchen and use their facilities (kitchen. showers)...very decent of them really don't you think?
We also took a trip on a really huge 18 metre catamaran to go spot the wildlife. This was much better than the lining up on the beach and in fact we saw loads of proper wild dolphins, logger head turtles, Manta rays & Dugongs (bit like manatees).
After two days at Monkey Mia we moved south on the Shark Bay peninsula down to Shell Beach. As the name clearly suggests..this beach is made up entirely of shells. It may not sound much but it really is quite a sight. The beach itself stretches forever and they say that the shells form an 8metre deep beach...thats a lot of shells!
We then headed down to Hamelin Pool where you can feast your eyes on the some living organisms that are billions of years old and are actually responsible for making life possible on this planet....da da daaaaaa...."The Stromotalites"...to look at they are not partuclarly entertaining but you have to respect these guys..they gave us oxygen...I won't bore you with anymore detail...just google search it if you want to know more
So that was that....A big 'tick' next to Shark Bay on our West Coast Itinerary. Now we're off to Canarvan the fruit and veg farming hub of the west coast. We need work and we're told that we can find it there so off we trundle.
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