Monday 14th May From Kalbarri to Denham
Here is the wicked camper in the morning on the spot where we had stayed for the night.
The rest area where we had stayed for the night was near a lake.
I discovered two new birds there. This one:
And that one:
In the morning, the first part of our drive was from Eurardyn Petrol station to Overlander Roadhouse.
On the road, we saw some “mirage”, as if some water was on the road, in front of us. It happened to us many times during that road trip to see that again!
That day the landscape was mostly grey and green bushes on the side of the road.
There were never many people on the road. We started a “car bet” game, where we were trying to guess how many cars we were going to see until a certain crossing or city. I was quite good at it and won a few times, but not always! At some point, we stopped to stretch legs and for a few pictures, and here is a photo of that red sand found on both side of the road. There were some shells, meaning probably that the sea was there at some point in the past!
We arrived at Overlander Roadhouse, refilled the tank, and took the road left, entering Shark Bay.
We stopped at the Shell Beach, one of the rare beaches made only of shells, billions of shells.
It was a very long beautiful and quiet beach made of pristine water. We chilled out there, had a swim and some lunch.
There was a billboard on the parking explaining about “Project Eden”. Australians make a very clear and simple distinction between native and feral animals. Feral is a word I had never learned in English, which means animals which are not native, or were domesticated but are now in the wild. They have been acknowledged as causing nuisance, damaging the environment and putting the ecosystem balance in danger, sometimes making native animals disappear. Animals consider native animals as good, and feral animals such as feral rabbits, foxes, cats, goats and even horses as bad.
We left Shell Beach, and stopped on the way to enjoy this beautiful view.
Then we went to Eagle Bluff where we had a short walk on the path there. There is a lot of seagrass and a few sea animals come here to feed.
We only saw one dugong from really far, and no sharks, neither dolphins. We drove to Denham, and just before the entrance was this billboard asking you to pay attention to this weird animal, which looks like a mouse but with huge ears. I wish we had seen one, what a strange thing!
In Denham, we went first to the Visitor Centre, where we asked phone numbers in Exmouth of dive centres where to book a swim with the whaleshark and the navy pier dive. Then we went to the campsite, and parked our van there. We gave a call to the dive shop of Exmouth and booked the navy pier dive for the 17th and the whaleshark day for the 18th May. Done. Then we went for a walk in the main street along the harbour, from which we could see the sunset.
While the guys went back to the camping to start cooking, I tried to find some internet computer, and found this one computer in a café, costing 2 dollars for 20 minutes use on a harsh to type keyboard. Beeeee…Western Australia is worth than Burma when it comes to internet connections, although not for the same reasons obviously!
I came back at the camping and couldn’t find the guys at the nearby kitchen which had barbecues and was right in front of our van, so I tried to find the second kitchen but got lost and simply couldn’t find my way. I also thought that considered that kitchen right in front was so close, they should probably be there, and were maybe still in town, drinking some beers maybe. So I waited and waited at the van. After about an hour, someone passed and took pity of me, and took me to that second kitchen. Arghhhh, I was so mad, against myself for being so dumb when it comes to finding my way somewhere and for not having tried to find it a tiny bit more, and against them for not having worried at all that I was still not there, and not even having tried to find me after an hour! Ma euhhhh!!! Anyway…
Tuesday 15th May Monkey Mia
In the morning, we drove to Monkey Mia where dolphins come every morning since the 1960’s to be feeded by the centre there. We were there around 7.50am, just in time for the first feeding session. We stayed for the three sessions. During each of them, there were always people near the water, who had come to see them from close, and someone from the centre explaining about the dolphins.
In the third section, a few dolphins jumped. Here is my best of hundreds of shots of dolphins and jumps!
Here is one which seems to be laughing on that picture.
On the beach was a pelican, which seemed to like being an attraction and sometimes seemed to say “Hey, I am here too!” when no one was looking at him anymore.
There was also a pair of birds coming close sometimes, another one I had not seen so far.
Some emeus were going around freely nearby too.
Flying over the parking were a few black kite eagles, but I couldn’t get a good shot. We stayed all morning at Monkey Mia, had some lunch, and then drove away, back to Overlander House. On the road back, we saw one emeu in the wild.
We refilled the tank in Overlander House, and drove north, in the direction of Carnarvon.
On the way, there was this gorgeous little hill.
We climbed it and enjoyed the view from there.
We ran into a very weird meeting of dwarfs. What were they all doing there? Is that an Australian joke or habit to drive with a dwarf and know the spots where they meet and leave your dwarf there? Win a postcard if you find out more about this and let me know!
Here is the road we continued our drive on.
We saw a lot of these old wind wheels, and also a lot of these white trees, but only at that moment did I see both so close to each other and made that quick picture taken from the van.
We stopped for some quick shopping in Carnarvon, where I saw for the first time of my life black carrots! Inside, they actually look orange too, but of a bit darker orange.
Sunset seeing from the car again with gorgeous colours, as every day in Australia.
We drove a bit longer, and stopped near a dry river at a place called Minilya river camp where we were the only vehicule on the rest area. We heard some noise in the trees and Chrissy thought it was some flying foxes but we didn’t see any that evening.
Tomorrow, going to Coral Bay!
Pom explores 