We spent a week at Denham in the heart of World Heritage listed Shark Bay. This was our western most stop of the trip. The waters here were again a beautiful aquamarine colour and crystal clear. Fishing (with very little success) and shell collecting were the key pastimes. On three occasions we drove to nearby Monkey Mia (a very small resort village). Here we got to enjoy the renowned dolphin visits. We were thrilled to see a six day old dolphin with it's mother in the close shallows on a number of occasions. One afternoon a group of dolphins came in to the shallows in search of fish. They would swim around slowly then dart off in pursuit of a meal. Harrison managed to catch up with them on a nearby sandy point. We weren’t sure if he was more excited about the fish or the dolphins splashing about! We hired a small glass bottom battery operated boat which was fun. Tim and Kate jumped in together and went stingray hunting.
We visited ‘Ocean Park’ a marine conservation/education park which was fascinating. The kids loved watching the sharks being fed up very close (peering excitedly from the footbridge spanning the shark pool). We learnt a great deal about many marine creatures native to the area, including stonefish and sea snakes which are present in the waters of Shark Bay.
Another day we went exploring in Cape Peron National Park. We drove some 110kms on rough and often sandy dirt tracks and along salt pans. This drive took us to various spectacular beaches and lookouts, including Skipjack Point where marine wildlife can be spotted from the headland on the change of the tide. We did see a dolphin and a manta ray and may have seen more if we didn’t have an adventurous little toddler on our hands in a ‘cliff risk’ area. The drive was lengthy but beautiful with more wildflowers dotting the dry landscape.
We soaked up one of our best outlooks on the trip at our caravan park in Denham, looking out over pristine Shark Bay. On the fourth day however the weather changed and we faced our windiest time yet. The wind built to a gale, rattling the van at night and flapping the bed ends without relief, to the point where we could not sleep for the din. At midnight we took down the annex which was struggling in the wind. This brought some relief. On subsequent nights we pulled the van forward so that the car could be parked to buffer the onshore wind (peaking with gusts up to 60km/hr). We also pulled the top down on the van which helped even further, but we did bump our heads a few too many times in our significantly reduced space! Our last evening in Denham the wind did die down to a tolerable level, thankfully!
On our way out of Denham we stopped off at the Stromatolites (ancient organisms in the saline waters) and ‘Shell Beach’ comprised of metres deep of tiny cockle shells producing a dazzling white shoreline.
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