Monkey Mia and Point Peron

Driving through Francois Peron National Park

Grant woke us all up at 5:45am this morning, rushed us through our breakfast, and bundled us into the car for the trip to Monkey Mia, on the other side of the peninsula.  Monkey Mia is well known for the dolphins that swim up to the shore to be hand fed fish every morning. 

 

Dolphins getting ready to be fed at Monkey Mia

Grant kept pointing out that Kumar and Jill said it was too expensive and that we could do it in Queensland, and should we really do it.  But in the end we decided that it was the thing to do and we would go ahead.  As we sat waiting on the boardwalk by the beach, Kumar and Jill came up behind us.  They had decided to come after all!

Dolphins are such lovely animals, and watching the baby dolphins swimming in the water with their mothers was lovely.  Dom was one of the people selected to come out and feed a dolphin a fish, so that was pretty cool.

We had another chat with Jill and Kumar, then drove towards Denham, stopping briefly to look at the four large wind generators they have outside the town.  They make a noise almost like an aeroplane engine.

Denham is a tiny little seaside town sloping down to the shallow bay, with one waterfront 'main street' and one back street.  We saw the two buildings built from the shell blocks mined at Hamelin, one of which was the Anglican church,  built in 1952.  Denham itself was only able to be reached by sea until a road was built in 1950.

 

Two different shell block buildings, a restaurant, and the Anglican church

There were quite a few businesses for sale, I thought, particularly as there aren't that many to begin with.  The surf shop, the coffee shop, the pizza shop.  The town was so quiet it was hard to imagine it being a hive of activity during tourist season.  I didn't even really have to check before crossing the main street, there was so little traffic.  But there was also a fair bit of new building work going on.  It was a strange place.

Main street Denham

I read an interesting plaque in the visitor centre, about a Nicolas Baudin from France, who led a scientific expedition to Australia in 1800, bringing 23 scientists from the fields of astronomy, botany, zooology, mineralogy, horticulture and geography. He mapped about two thirds of the coast of Australia, named a lot of places in Western Australia (anything with a french name I guess), and then took back live animals to Empress Josephine who made an Australian zoo in the grounds of her summer palace at Malmaison on the outskirts of  Paris.  He died on the way back to France of tuberculosis in 1603.

Finally out of Denham, we drove back into the Francois Peron National Park and right up the end through 40km of sand to point Peron, where the water was a beautiful clear blue.  I saw an enormous stingray 'flying' past and there was a clean toilet with loads of paper (who gets the job of driving all the way out here to clean the loo!) but the flies were unbelievably bad.  The wind has changed direction to an easterly and brought the flies with a vengeance.  Cooper really didn't cope with flies attacking him from all sides and crawling over his arms and legs and into his nose, so he screamed all along the beach where there were hundreds of cormorants.  Joseph scared them all into the air, then they settled in the water just off shore.  The place stank.  Not sure if that was from the dead cormorants on the beach or the cormorant waste...we were glad to get back into the car but then had to scare all the flies out of there as well.

Looking towards Skipjack Point from Point Peron

We drove back a little way to Skipjack point, named after a type of fish often found here, and walked along the boardwalk and lookouts overlooking the Indian Ocean.  It really was spectacular, and we saw more stingrays swims past and some manta rays in a school (?).

View from Skipjack Point

We stopped at a few more deserted camping spots (Bottle bay and Gregories) before driving back down to the Homestead where there is a hot tub fed by an artesian bore.  It is kept at a constant 40 degrees centigrade, and although it felt burning hot when you first got in, it only took a moment before you relaxed and we soaked in it for almost an hour.  The best bath ever, overlooking green lawn and emus drinking at the creek.

Homestead Hot Tub

Finally we extracted everyone with the promise of a repeat visit on our way out in the morning, and we drove back to the Big Lagoon and our van.

Everyone went fishing off the beach again, despite the huge wind that has sprung up.  We kept three fish, two big bream and a pink snapper that we tried to throw back, but which died while we were getting the hook out. We cleaned them ready for breakfast, we are just too tired tonight.  Cleaning the fish in the sand, crouched behind the van to keep back some of the howling wind, in the dark was an experience. (Grant and Dom and Jo's experience...I hid in the van)

Fried rice for dinner.  It had been a huge day and we were too tired to do anything but fall into bed.

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Vicki