Departed Coral Bay at 8.00am for the long drive to Shark Bay. Once again we drove through unfenced cattle country and saw dead cattle by the road. Also saw several groups of emus close to the road. It was quite a windy day and we could feel the wind buffeting the van.
The Shark Bay Region is World Heritage listed and home to an extensive range of rare marine life, rare plants, mammals and birds. It is estimated that one eighth of the world population of Dugongs live in Shark Bay waters. The coastline has rugged red cliffs, white sandy beaches and clear blue waters.
The town of Denham is built on the beachfront and is a good base for visiting the marine park and Francois Peron National Park, and as most of the coastal towns on this coast has very good fishing.
Our caravan park is situated on the beach and is quite large. It is unusual in that it is built on a hill on 3 levels, connected by ramps. Our site is on the top level and we get good TV reception for a change.
The usual red dust that we have come to expect in caravan parks in this part of the world, has been replaced by finely crushed white shells and is much easier to keep out of the van.
We drove 20km out of town to visit Eagle Bluff where a boardwalk along the edge of the bluff gives a great view of the bay. On the way back to town we called into Ocean Park where we viewed sharks, turtles, stingrays and fish and joined the 45 minute tour by a marine biologist.
We were up early the next morning to drive to Monkey Mia for the 1st feeding of the dolphins. We stood barefoot in the water for ages waiting for the dolphins to arrive. Eventually we had 4 dolphins for the feeding and another small group of wild ones who refuse to be hand fed and just played in the water. The feeding itself was quite brief and our feet felt frozen by the time it was over, so we adjourned to the restaurant for a hot buffet breakfast.
We can feel the weather cooling down since we have been here and had 2 very brief, very light showers of rain yesterday. It is too cold for swimming at present. We are expecting more cold, rainy weather as we head further south.
Cheers
Rhonda (Sam) & Pete
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