Thursday 8.9.2011: 16 degrees - 27 degrees - sunny windy. Drove from Carnarvon to Hamelin Pool 195 kilometers, where we saw the stromatolites which are 3.5 billion years old, a form of bacteria which form fossil rocks and produce oxygen. Scientists believe that they were the earliest living organism, widely distributed over the earths surface and that they were responsible for most of the oxygen in our atmosphere enabling the evolution of air breathing animals. They live in extremely salty water and they existed before any animals or birds were on the earth.
While here we were attacked by plagues of small flies and had to break out the fly nets to put over our hats to keep the flies out of eyes mouth and nose.
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| Lonely place - is anyone out there? |
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| Ancient Shoreline |
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| Compacted shells form a lightweight rock quarried for building |
Friday 9.9.2011: 14 degrees - 28 degrees - sunny & windy. Walked back to the boardwalk to see the stromatolites again, hoping the tide would be higher, but they are in a part of the bay which does not get much tide and the salt content in the water is double the normal amount of salt, the only reason they are still alive is because there are no predators’ because of the high levels of salinity in the water.
We had a tour through the old telegraph station at Hamelin Pool and saw a video about the stromatolites which was very interesting, we then drove the 150 kilometers to Denham where we went to the Information centre and found out about Monkey Mia, and park passes etc. We booked into the Shark Bay Van Park and went for a walk back to the Discovery Centre and learnt about the history of the area and about the Dutch coming about 200 years before Captain Cook and Dirk Hartog about 100 years before Captain Cook came to Australia, also the history of the pearling industry.
Saturday 10.9.2011: 14 degrees - 28 degrees, sunny - windy.. Drove 24 kilometers to Monkey Mia and set up our bus at Monkey Mia Resort, then we went for a walk to check out the place and had dinner in the café. The resort is well set out with caravan park, cabins, backpacker lodge and up market accommodation as well as store,visitor centre, hotel and restaurants.
More flies
Sunday 11.9.2011: 14 degrees - 28 degrees - sunny and windy. Woke early to be down on the beach to see the feeding of the dolphins, we were there at 7.30 am and it was very chilly, along with about 200 other people, we were invited to stand in the water and see the dolphins come in to us about 2 or 3 feet away, four dolphins came in close and there were about six more circling further out, they have lovely faces, they look like they are smiling. Four or five people are selected by the rangers from the crowd to go forward and feed a fish to a dolphin , they are careful to only feed a small quantity of fish to each dolphin. So that they don’t become dependent on hand feeding. After standing in the water for about an hour waiting and listening to the rangers incessant chatter my feet were numb.
We drove back into Denham and parked down by the water and had lunch, then we drove 20 kilometers to Eagle Bluff where we walked on the boardwalk looking down into the clear water, about 30 meters below, where according to the information board the sea teams with life, we managed to see a ray, some small sharks and some birds. The whole of the Shark Bay area is World Heritage listed because of its unique environment.
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| J walking emu at Monkey Mia |
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| Denham main street |
Monday 12.9.2011: Left Denham after posting Katrina and Dean’s birthday presents then called in at Shell Beach on our way, it was like walking on shell dunes to get to the water, again the water is extremely salty. The shell beach area is about 120km long and up to 5 meters thick of small cockle shells. Shell Beach is on the same side of Shark Bay as the stromatolites, it was a bit cool so we didn‘t worry about swimming in the water which has the same effect as the Dead Sea, you become very buoyant.
We drove 250 kilometers down the Brand Highway to Nerren Nerren 24 hour rest area and stayed overnight.
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| Moon rising through trees |
Tuesday 13.9.2011: Headed down the highway toward Kalbarri and after months of little civilisation between main centres we came to the northern side of the WA wheat belt with large fields of wheat, cranola, Lupis, - civilisation again. Drove 154k to Kalbarri National Park (back in he scrub again) and drove out to Hawks Head and Ross Graham lookouts to see the gorge which was very ordinary then drove on to Kalbarri and booked into the Murchison Van Park which is in the centre of the town and across the road from the river which had a channel out through the reef to the sea. We went for a walk and booked a canoe safari tour down the Murchison river for Thursday morning.
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| First sign of farming |
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| Hawks head Lookout (rock formation vaguely looks like Bob Hawks head) |
Wednesday 14.9.2011: Went for a drive along the cliff tops to see the view and check out the wildflowers. I became sick and had no energy to walk to the viewing platforms along the cliff tops, so Lloyd checked it all out. The canoe safari group advised us the tour had been put off until Friday.
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| Murchison river entrance Kalbarri |
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| Cliffs south of Kalbarri |
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| Looking toward township |
Thursday 15.9.2011: Took the day quietly and did the washing, then as I was still not feeling well, we went to the Tourist Information Centre and cancelled our Canoe Safari for the next day.
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