Shark Bay and Monkey Mia

Tues 17^th June 

Shark Bay is one of the world’s few places that satisfies all four of the natural criteria to be listed as a world heritage area – Natural beauty, Earth’s evolutionary history (stromatolites) Ecological Processes (ongoing geological process – the largest seagrass banks in the world) and Biological Diversity (important habitats where threatened animal species still survive.)

Dirk Hartog Island is where Dirk Hartog landed in 1616 and nailed an engraved pewter plate to a post. It was later replaced with another and the original returned to Holland. There is a replica in the Shark Bay Discovery Centre at Denham. In 1964 the first Gemini space capsule was to be tracked across Australia using the Carnarvon tracking station, but just before lift-off lightning vaporised a few metres of the phone line. Fortunately the old Morse code link was still intact and Lillian O’Donahue spent 4 hours relaying important information backwards and forwards through Hamelin Pool until the line was fixed.

 Mick and I set off early to get to Monkey Mia, about 75 km from home. Jan & Gorge weren’t up when we left. We saw two sessions of feeding and there were about a dozen or more dolphins there. Several spectators were there; some with the legs of their pants rolled up to their knees and then going in up to their thighs. On the second feeding there weren’t many people and we had a great view from the pier on which we stood. The dolphins were swimming right under us. After that we went and sat on some comfy padded chairs outside the resort, no doubt looking like millionaires, with our feet up and watched even more dolphins swimming around. Jan and George got there later and were amused by an emu terrorising a Japanese family. Everywhere they walked, it walked and everywhere they ran it ran.

 

We then went into Denham, Australia’s most westerly town and had some lunch. Denham is near where HMAS Sydney went down and there is a memorial in town on which all the names of those who perished are written on blue perspex.  In one shop in Denham was a sign “When a mosquito lands on your testicle you realise that problems aren’t always best solved with violence.” 

We headed back towards camp exploring the side tracks along the way. The water in the bays ranged from deep, dark navy blue to aqua and even emerald green depending on the angle of and amount of sun shining. The sand went from deep red through lots of shades of orange and yellow to nearly white. At one bay the water was so clear that when the sun was shining we could see a giant sting ray from the lookout above. There have been warnings of horrific storms down the coast to the south although we are only tipped to be on the edge with some wind and maybe a shower. 

By the time we got back to the van the wind was starting to pick up – not even a stiff breeze yet, and the sky was clouded over with black clouds to the south west.

Wed 18^th June

We drove down to have a go at Useless Loop which is the road that leads to Steep Point – Mainland’s most western point. We had been warned that the road was terrible and really only fit for 4WD. Still, you know us! We went about 20km on a new bitumen road towards a homestead 43 km in so we thought we’d at least reach that. Then we read that you needed a permit which came with a key to open the locked gate to get in.  While we discussed this, the road turned to a wide dirt road that hadn’t long been graded, then it got a bit worse and so on.  Next we noticed a huge black cloud heading towards us from the South West so we turned back and went to Hamelin instead and drank coffee on their veranda while we watched the rain. When it eased we headed back to camp to find that the sky was blue again and there had only been a couple of drops of rain there. After lunch we went for a dip in the hot artesian pool and again we had it to ourselves.  After dinner we went up to the community area and enjoyed the campfire while all the rugby fans watched the state of origin game on the TV in the undercover area.