On the way into Denham at the bottom of shark Bay is the Hamelin nature reserve and Hamelin Pools. We detoured to have a walk down to the STROMATOLITES, yes I know that’s a big word for this time of the morning. They are a living rock, which according to science have been here for over 3 billion years. In short they are a composite of blue green algae and deposit oxygen into the environment. Cleaver little buggers and they look really cool too!!
We took advice from our new buddies Haydn and Teresa and booked ourselves into the top tourist park at Denham and yep it has the best position right on the beach or should I say bay, as this is “Shark Bay”. We got a spot right at the top of the park as its set in tiers, with a view to die for straight over the bay. That was great until about 5 o clock when the sea breeze grew and grew and the van flapped and flapped. The next day we were all packed up and on the road again for our shortest trip ever 32 seconds from hook “up” to hook “off”. Yep you guessed it we moved to a lower tier less of a view but only 20 steps to the sand and lots of shelter from the afternoon winds.
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| no view, shelter |
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| view, no shelter |
Early that morning after our second set up we took a drive to Eagle Bluff and walked on the Broad walk so as to get a view of the cove the bay and the SHARKS and there were plenty of them too. The walk is very high up from the water so it is difficult to actually take a picture of the sharks. I tried but they look like black dots so sorry guys!
The small tiny minute shells around here are unreal, they are perfect in shape and form but so so so so small. The early settlers used the shells to make house bricks (rather large bricks actually more like besser blocks) and built their homes with them. The ground around Hamelin is so compact with these shells that they had a small shell quarry where they simply cut square bricks straight out of the ground.
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| shell bricks |
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| shell quarry |
We are really enjoying the west coast the views at every stop are just amazing, and again we keep meeting amazing people. Whether its because we are all like minded I’m not sure???? But Ozzies I have definitely decided are a great bunch of people especially the travellers. Pip has caught up with Lily and Jack from Coral bay again which is great as the parents Barb and Roger are (not only similar age to us) but great value too. Lily is an absolute brain child and although only 8 appears to write like a 12 year old …. Go Lily. Jack is just a lovely boy who is full of character. We went to the ocean park to hear about all the local marine life. The young tour guides (Ed and Wil) there were just fantastic, I was sure they were young marine biologist as their knowledge and articulation was brilliant. Pip got to learn about all the marine life around shark bay. Next we went to Peron station (in the National Park) to learn of the old days and the sheep shearing, we also watched a couple of male emus who were looking after their young (hear that boys! The males do the maternal thing or should I say paternal) chasing and fighting each other. They were a bit close for my liking; Mike however couldn’t get close enough.
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| jack, lily n pip |
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| ocean park |
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| ocean park |
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| emu fight fight fight |
Today we went fishing off the beach, a little way round from the caravan park. We were hoping to be a little more fortunate fishing here than we were at Monkey Mia yesterday where we saw lots of dolphin’s, (silly backpackers trying to ride them) star fish, and cone shells (very poisonous) but no fish. Alas we couldn’t stop them, today 10 whiting. Some we had to though back, way small but others good enough for a feed. We are heading back to the same site tomorrow arvo at high tide to do the same again with Roger, Barb, Jack and little Lily. I’ll let you know how we go. We are also taking Pip over to Monkey Mia again to see if we can catch the feeing of the dolphins. Stay tuned for the last episode of MM (Monkey Mia).
P.S I have been drinking way too much with all this socialising, only one day alcohol free so far uggghhhh….. might need to book in for a detox next year!!! ha ha ha ha TTFN burp!#*
P.P.S All you Mike followers….Don’t you go thinking Mike has been any better either!!
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