Shark Bay and Monkey Mia

View from site at Denham - did see a dolphin swimming
past as we were setting up.

 Denham was our home for a few nights. Another picturesque coastal town, which would have started life as a sleepy little fishing village. The coastline here is quite convuluted, with two separate capes that head north west from the mainland. There seems to be a lot of these type of geographical features along this WA coastline. After 'umming and aahing', we decided not to go out and up to the second cape, upon which the western most point of mainland australia is located - Steep Point. It was a long way to go just to say we had done it! (Next time!!?)



The Bluff lookout - over Shark Bay. These shallows are home
to reef sharks, dugongs, rays and lots of fish. this day we didn't see any!

  Dirk Hartog Island, just off the mainland at Steep Point, was the first known landing of European sailors in Australia. Amazingly, in 1616! The Dutch sailor, Hartog, marked the occasion with an engraved pewter plate, hammered into a post at the location. This seemed to us quite bizzare, as then Capt Cook didn't claim Australia for the British until more than 150 years later. Just think...we could all be of Dutch descent if things had been different. Mind you, if I'd have landed on this piece of coastline way back then, with no services etc, I might have thought it not worth the effort too. It is pretty stark, and unrelentless.

Spot the campervan on the LHS - the sign clearly said, no unauthorised
camping in this area. I hope his handbreak works well!

Coast line, north towards Denham

After the Bluff, it was off to Ocean Park Aquarium. First priority was "coffee" with friends.

Jed, still 'thrilled' ?? to be in a photo, Jeremy, Laura, Emily,
 Lily and Tyler. Yay, for the SA connection!

Theme appropriate decorations on the  plates that came with the double choc cheesecake. Some people have lucky kids! This was only purchased after they had run out of thehighly recommended mangoe and macadamia nut cheesecake!





On to the "real" marine creatures...

Guided tour of different species that are housed within the park.
Here, Will, the guide is feeding the sharks. I'd say the guides are all
marine biologists (or trainee ones), as he was so knowledgable and
passionate about the work he was doing and the creatures with
 which he is working.

     

Lion Fish, Lemon Sharks, Clown Fish, Squid and many others.
These little clown fish would grab a piece of food, will and then
dropped into the tank and then race off to feed a particular sea
 anenome that they appeared to have each adopted.

If you look carefully, Bob is a three legged
turtle. Evidently, he manages really well and
will be released back into the wild in a few
months.

Squid, lit up as he moves towards the food.

The following day it was off to see the Dolphins at Monkey Mia. (Along with a few hundred others). The presentation of information about the dolphins was excellent, and audible with a microphone being used by the speaker. But the viewing was 'tricky' - so many people, and only one dolphin for a long time. Several others of the same dolphin's family came in as people were asked to move back out of the water. (it took some people quite a bit of telling for them to understand the concept of "get out of the water"!!)

Piccolo was the only dolphin present for a long time!

We found it easier to view the dolphins from the jetty, adjacent to the beach. Eventaully, about 20 dolphins were nearby, and the young calves were doing lots of flipping and frollicking. Really hard to get nice photos of them tho'.
    

Beautiful creatures!

           

           

From Monkey Mia we boarded the AristocatII, for a catamaran ride out into the bay, looking out for dugongs, dolphins and anything else interesting. Shark Bay is a really suitable breeding ground for the Dugong. It is relatively shallow water - averaging 5 metres in depth, and only getting up to 10 metres deep, nice and warm and grows the seagrasses well, that the dugongs like to eat. Iit's home to 10% of the world's dugongs, and this is one of the reasons shark bay has a World Heritage listing.

Aristicat 2

Jon, third standing from right was "coerced" to help raise the sail

                      

Sail unfurled!



 First stop on the tour was another pearl farm - the Blue Lagoon Pearl Farm, where they seeded and harvested black pearls (which we found out can be any colour, of the inside, of the particular pearl growing shell that is used).  The processing shed was positioned out from Monkey Mia Beach on a floating pontoon structure.

  If you recognise one of these fellas from somewhere, you are probably right! The guy on the left is "Jamie" off  'Farmer Wants a Wife' - not sure which series. It didn't mean much to me, but evidently the 'fame' has been good for tourism in Denham and Monkey Mia. These two brothers own and manage the pearl farm, along with their father who dose a lot of the technical work of "seeding" the pearls.



A Dugong, with a calf. (again, a bit tricky to photograph) At
one point the calf could be clearly seen 'riding' on the mother's
 back, as they do when a percieved danger is nearby.




We went further out into the bay, and into a specific area that is a marine reserve for the breeding of dugongs. Evidently, this tour has the one licence for travel in this area, and can only pass through once per day.

The kids having fun in the boom net, on the way back to shore

Another bit of 'excitement' for the day was the arrival of the navy in town! Evidently, a bit of shore leave. The locals hadn't seen them at Monkey Mia before.

HMAS Woolongong
We got quite close, while on our dugong trip. They didn't try shooting
at us tho' , which was a good thing.! They had evidently been in the
Christmas Island area prior to this, intercepting people smuggling boats

First load of Navy personnel, in 'civvies', being ferried to shore. They were later spotted in the cafe.

Nice beach front at Monkey Mia