Monkey Mia

19th November - 21st November

The drive to Denham is pretty straight forward but the bonus is passing through Hamelin Pools, where a colony of ancient Stromatolites still live. Those of ya who’ve read Bill Bryson will know about these but basically, these are reckoned to be the oldest organisms on earth (1900 million years old – wowser!) – they thrive in heavily salted areas and the sea here forms a shallow lagoon, from which the water evaporates and thus the saline content of the remaining water increases – which the Stromy’s love! These thingummyjigs work by converting CO2 into oxygen, which we all need – the air did smell fresher here, I swear it. At times, you can see the Stroms bubblin away happily like a car battery in its death throes, but alas we didn’t see anything of the sort! Still, you think I'm old...!

A bit further up the peninsular and we passed through a big electric fence, which marks the boundary of Project Eden and the start of the Francis Peron NP. Apparently, the feral foxes, cats and Australians were decimating these area’s cuddly ground animals and so, together with baiting and trapping, the feral nasties have been reduced to such an extent that the cuddly ground animals are now thriving North of the fence – bless!

We chilled at Denham for a night - which was a bit much cos there's FA to do in Denham, although it is a cute sorta place. The highlight of this area is Monkey Mia, near the National Park, where there is a dolphin sanctuary and where you can interact with the dolphins. If you’re REALLY lucky, you can feed ‘em! I really got the impression that the dolphins were checking us out as much as we were them, as they’d swim up and down the line, rolling over now and then to see more clearly. Like everything though, it was really busy, but worth it, as they're pretty cool creatures - one of them had a baby calf in tow too and apparently another one was preggers - exciting stuff in the Dolphin world.

Really looks it huh - BRIGHT LIGHT, BRIGHT LIGHT!

Shell Beach was also pretty cool, the entire beach is covered in the shells of tiny crustaceans. The main problem here is just make sure you don’t lose yr sunnies!! It’s sooo bright! The cool thing? The entire beach is made up of these shells - tonnes and tonnes of 'em. When the settlers were first here, they quarried a lot of the shells and used them as brick material - there's only an old church, now a restaurant, left, but they look pretty cool. Wonder if they smell of fish?!