Shark Bay
Trip Start
Sep 22, 2008
1
21
50
Trip End
Feb 01, 2009
Monkey Mia,
Western Australia,
Australia
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Monkey Mia is a conservation area in Shark Bay where people come on a daily basis to experience the hand feeding of a group of wild dolphins that come to the beach. There's just one resort catering for all budgets, from backpackers to beachfront villas. It has a relaxed, island retreat feel and we instantly fell in love.
The closest town is Denham, a fishing port and tourist destination. It has a beautiful foreshore and once had streets paved with oyster shells. Unfortunately someone in their great wisdom poured bitumen over these streets and ruined what would have been a popular tourist attraction.
We had four absolutely perfect days here. Each morning we would stroll down to the beach to watch the dolphins come in. There are three feedings each morning, so we soon learnt that the most popular was the first at around 7.30am. People are randomly chosen to enter the water and offer a fish to one of the five female dolphins that are part of the feeding program. Once the crowd leaves after the first feed, there's a good chance of being chosen. Hollie was lucky enough to feed a dolphin on 3 consecutive days, Lauren twice and Keith once.
Another highlight was seeing our first dugongs on a wildlife cruise. We sailed on a catamaran called "Shotover", which used to race from Brisbane to Gladstone. Shark Bay is the home for approx 10,000 dugong (10% of the world's dugong population). It's brimming with sea life - we saw turtles, sea snakes, dolphins, rays and at least 8 dugong the day we went out.
Francois Peron National Park, accessible only by 4 wheel drive, was stunning. We will forever retain a vivid picture of looking down from red cliffs, past white sandy beaches to view a host of manta rays and eagle rays cruising the crystal clear waters below us. From a lookout at Skipjack Point we were lucky enough to see more dugong grazing on the sea grass beds below (they require 70kg each day).
Hamelin Pool in Shark Bay is also home to a colony of Stromatilites, the world's largest and oldest living fossils. They're colonies of micro-organisms that resemble the oldest and simplest forms of life on earth. They thrive here due to the extreme salinity of the water, the occurrence of calcium bicarbonate and the limited water circulation.
Shell Beach consists of countless coquina shells and stretches 120km. The early settlers of the area dug them from nearby quarries in the form of shell block to build churches etc. The calcium contained in the shells would get wet, causing the shells to adhere to each other as they dried.
We could have stayed in this area for weeks. It was our idea of paradise.
