23^rd August: Denham

What a magical day! We finally made it to Monkey Mia! 

 

(I say “finally”, as this is the third attempt. When we first came this way, all roads were unsealed in various states and we had rebroken a spring on the van coming out from Tom Price. Once again, Glen had welded it up in Karratha but it was breaking again and 200 extra miles on rough dirt was too much to contemplate! Then we were a cruise which was supposd to come into Shark Bay. Well, a cyclone put that out of the question. Third time lucky!)

So we left at 7.15 am to be in time to feed the dolphins. The beach at Monkey Mia is glorious – white sand and clear, green to blue water. We kicked our shoes off and joined the 100+ people listening to the Parks and Wildlife briefing. Then down on the water's edge we waited for the dolphins to decide it was breakfast time. They only feed the adult females as the males become very aggressive and even dangerous. The babies stay in deeper water as they can't suckle in the shallows. So they come and play in the shallows for ½ hour , then they are fed and when the buckets are washed out, the dolphins know it is time to leave. Each dolphin gets only 4 or 5 fish (500gms) as they monitor very carefully how much they are fed to ensure they still need to fish. It is all highly organised as volunteers bring down the buckets carrying the fish, the number according to how many dolphins arrive, and select individuals from the crowd to give a dolphin a fish. Both Gail and Glen were chosen and I went with Gail. Wecouldn't believe our luck! It was all over in a few minutes as each feed lasts only seconds.

They have managed this process for many years this way as they found with the old casual unregulated feeding, the suckling mums would stay in the shallows, not feed their pups and not teach them survival skills. Many pups died. (One dolphin lost 7 in a row and only now has had 2 live offspring.) It was great fun and they are such gentle, intelligent creatures.

There was a second feeding session and one dolphin was “herding” the ranger: she wouldn't let her walk down the beach past a certain point. But the funniest thing that happened was back on the sand up the beach. A ranger was standing up the top with a yellow bucket to distract the two large pelicans which figured they could get an easy meal. Well, the resident emu obviously doesn't like pelicans and ran aggressively at them, neck stretched out, and chased them away and when they came back, it took after them again! Unfortunately, I was too slow to take a photo but it was funny!!

After a while we had lunch under a shelter on the beach with a bottle of wine. Such a hard life!! We were booked on a wildlife cruise on the “Shotover”, a racing cataraman, 18 metres long and 9 metres wide. (Twice as wide as Glen's boat is long!) 

What a beautiful boat and reputed to be very fast. Unfortunately, it was so calm going out that the motor had to be used but coming back, we sailed silently along looking for animals. We saw dolphins, rays and turtles but no dugong. I have yet to see a dugong. They are there as their poo was there but they are very elusive! Frankly, Glen and I didn't care if we hadn't seen anything. It was just a joy to be on the water on such a beautiful day on such a great boat!

We were late back but we were allowed 15 mins to go to the car to get changed into warmer clothes(fortunately therewas no-one in the carpark as that was where we changed!), collect our drinkies and nibbles and run back to the boat as we had also booked for the sunset cruise. The breeze had strengthen enough for us to sail and as there was no set destinaton, it was very relaxed and totally enjoyable. As there wasnot a cloud in the sky, the sunset was not spectacular but again, I didn't care. It was just so beautiful. 

We had bubbles and nibbles as the boat slid silently through the water.

Glen spent the return journey chatting with the skipper who owned the boat. He and his sons used to  sail Windrushes on Lake Cootharaba and they talked about sailing in general. We drove home slowing (in deference to the wildlife) in the gathering dark. What a wonderful, amazing day!!