Froggles Travels: Denham and Monkey Mia 14.08.2016

We arrived in Denham on the 14^th of August after a pleasant drive from Carnarvon through fields of bright yellow wild flowers and booked in at the Shark Bay caravan park. The drive was most enjoyable and the scenery reminded me a lot of the Karoo in South Africa, see the photos below.

The region is called Shark Bay and is a world heritage listed site, the little town of Denham is a picturesque little gem with good fishing and nice beaches. It is also the gateway to Monkey Mia and other lovely coastal drives. See the photos below of the beach and beachfront of the little town.

We spent the afternoon on the beach and let the dogs run free and the following day we decided to visit the Ocean Park which we had passed on the way into town. We got there relatively early and after a lovely cup of coffee and admiring the view from the deck, we went to see what the Ocean Park aquarium had to offer. We were pleasantly surprised with the species of sea life on display and as they did not object to the dogs being on a leash in the aquarium, we spent the whole morning there.

Here are some of the sea creatures that were on display

Here are a few Sea snakes, which are the most venomous snakes in the world, however very docile and therefore there has never been any reported deaths from the bite of this creature. Below a Moray eel and Sea turtle.

Stone Fish

We saw an array of stone fish, gropers, cray fish and corals but some of the Stingrays that we saw were quite fascinating, however the best was yet to come. This is what we had come to see. See below

And this is what we had come to see the feeding of sharks

Although the sharks were not as big as the great white shark, they were still voracious Bull Sharks.

We left the aquarium well pleased that we had visited this destination and made our way to visit the other attractions in Shark bay. The first stop being Eagle Bluff

Here is a photo of Bernie on the Eagle Bluff look out. We were fortunate to see a school of Stingrays swimming below as well as a few other fish that we were not able to identify as they were a little far from the viewing platform

We traveled approximately 200 km that day and came across some pretty scenery, see below

We stopped over to see this beach which is covered in billions of tiny shell.

Our last stop for the day was at Hamelin Pools, where we went to see the stromatolites growing on some rock formation in the sea. To this day, I still don’t know what the fuss was all about, to me it looked like black algae growing on a rock. I can’t believe that people will travel hundreds of kilometres to see this.

And below the stromatolites???? What a waste of time

The following day, which turned out to be a beautiful spring day, we decided to head to Monkey Mia to see the pods of dolphins that swim to shore to interact with humans. We had heard a lot about this place and told that the volunteer rangers were overbearing and that you could not get anywhere near a dolphin, however we found it to be the contrary. These rangers have done an amazing job in getting the population of Dolphins back to where it should be, considering that the dolphins were on the decline due to humans interaction and hence they became totally dependent on the fish that we fed them and would not go to sea to feed. The average survival rate which had declined to 1 in 17 births in the sixties has dramatically increased to way over 10.

Once again we came across a wind farm and lovely beaches

On our arrival into the Monkey Mia resort, this lovely fella was standing welcoming everyone.

The photo above is of a group of folks that had gathered to see the dolphins and below is a ranger feeding and playing with a dolphin.

I had to take a photo of this pelican that was very friendly and was quite at home with the dolphins.

We spent the day on the beach with the dogs and had a great time. The beach was relatively quiet and we saw plenty of dolphins and of course our friendly pelican.

The dolphins love to interact with humans and they come close to shore

We had a lunch break at Monkey Mia with an awesome view of the beach

After lunch we decided to walk on the beach past the pier where we let the dogs run free and came across this small stingray close to shore, needless to say the dogs were ready to pounce.