Stopped at the new visitor centre in Denham which has a new history exhibition of the area but you had to pay to get in- outrage! So Jack just bought a souvenir coin and we got a permit to get into Monkey Mia. The town was in mad preparations for the Dirt Hartog Festival- a Danish sailer who in 1616 was one of the earliest Europeans to sail into Shark Bay and nailed a pewter plate on one of the islands.
Monkey Mia, 30mins north of Denham was beautiful. You would think you were on an island resort in the Whitsundays. Even though the amenities in the camp ground were aging; the pool, tennis courts, bar and fancy new restaurant in which we could only afford to buy coffees- were great.
The dolphins come to the beach shoreline every morning for a feed. In the past this was unregulated which had negative affects on dolphin behaviour such as mothers leaving the babies for an easy feed. So now the National Parks Rangers manage the feeding. They only feed 2-5 dolphins each session and only three different people get to feed one fish to a dolphin. Jack and Ava were lucky to be chosen out of a crowd of 160 people to feed Kiya. Didn't know that dolphins live up to 40-50 years.
We visited the Peron Homestead which was a sheep station in the early 1900s before becoming a National Park. It has a hot tub from the artesian bore- unusual to be sitting in a jucuzzi in the middle of nowhere.
On leaving Shark bay we visited Hamelin pool which has stromatolites- living fossils that are about 3,000 years old. These are similar to those which are 3.5 billion years old in other places like Abercrombie Caves near Bathurst (our first stop). These structures help to explain the evolution of the earth's atmosphere and helped achieve Shark Bay's World Heritage listing.
http://www.sharkbay.org.au/nature-of-shark-bay/fact-sheets/stromatolites-of-shark-bay.aspx
Next stop Geraldton.
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