Shark Bay and Monkey Mia

Our experiences at this Shark Bay world heritage area were very happy and probably better than what we had expected. Our first visit was to Shell Beach - a unique environment where the miniature cockles are the only living forms to survive in the sea which is twice as salty as the normal sea. Over the millennia, these shells have washed up on the beach which is 15km long and 1 km wide and up to a depth of 10metres. The pristine white beach is made up entirely of these shells and not sand. In past eras, these shells formed a hard rock like substance which was cut into blocks used for buildings. An example of these buildings was this old building in Denham. 

Once in Denham, we actually entered the world of boats! We’ve never seen so many boat trailers lined up along the Main Street - Darryl thought he may trade his Stacer for one of the more substantial ones we saw being launched!! 

We weren’t really looking forward to the caravan park stay as we thought we’d be squashed in - but we had spacious sites across the way to each other and found it quiet - plus we had a bit of a sea view. We were fortunate to experience a beautiful sunset from the viewing area along with a glass of champagne and a beer!

We popped over to Monkey Mia which was only 30km away and were impressed with the resort which was very clean and tidy and had a pretty swimming beach. Our luck was in as even though we missed the formal dolphin feeding time, we saw several dolphins quite close to shore. And on the jetty, we saw a few big turtles cruising around. 

Denham is a very busy tourist town - a far cry from the early days when the smell of discarded oysters from the pearling industry was over powering! It was sobering to see the memorial to the HMAS Sydney which disappeared off Dirk Hartog Island during WW2. For a long time, the disappearance was a mystery but now is thought that a German ship disguised as a Dutch frigate fired on the unsuspecting Sydney, sinking it and the entire company of 645 sailors were lost. The German ship also sank but 317 of the 397 crew were rescued - which poses the question. - why were there no survivors from the Sydney when most of the Germans did survive? 

From there we didn’t have to travel very far to this rustic beach side camp at Gladstone Bay. We are camped right on the beach edge, can enjoy a camp fire, have novel artesian fed showers and flushing toilets. Once again we enjoyed a lovely sunset whilst sitting by the fire relaxing with our drinks. We’ve enjoyed a rest day and were even treated with freshly baked scones from Dennis’s  kitchen for morning tea. 

This is the evening view from our campsite - how lucky are we?

 We will continue to head north to Carnarvon where we will stock up our supplies and head inland where we plan to visit the Kennedy Ranges and Mt Augustus. We are hoping there will be less flies there but aren’t that hopeful. Our fly nets are a necessary accessory and we hope for a breeze to keep them away.  The days here are warm and nights mild so we’ve packed away our winter woolies. We have our fingers crossed for the rains to reach home so hope for good news!  Good luck also  to the sporting families tomorrow - we hope for good news there too. Till our next blog, love from us travellers. ❌❌❌❌