Shark Bay

on september 2nd, john and i packed up the civic and headed up the coast for our first holiday in australia. destination: coral bay. first stop: shark bay. we stopped because we couldn't get accomodation in coral bay for the entire week. and we'd read good things about shark bay, so we thought why not. this blog is the 1st part of the trip. i'll post another about coral bay later. and i'll do a few pics on each one, but then i'll just do one post of all pics with little explanations :)

the drive to shark bay was long, and proved to be rather unexciting. australian roads leave much to the imagination and often don't really make sense. take for instance to go north from perth, you have to drive east first, then catch a north bound highway. the freeway from the city leads to nowhere (as we discovered) and you have to detour east for a bit. anyhow, we got on the proper road and drove until we reached port denison, where we stopped to have lunch. a cute little town by the sea. as it was sunday and nothing would be open anyhow, and we really just wanted to get on with the driving, we didn't stay long.

we drove through geraldton, the "big" city oustide of perth (pop. 19 000) kept on until we reached the turnoff for "Shark Bay World Heritage Area". ooooh. we were very excited. by this point we'd already been in the car about 9-10 hours and figured we were probably getting close to our destination. handy travel tip in australia #1: never trust a map or guide book with distances and times. and always check more then one source. turns out, the village we'd be staying in was about 200km from the turnoff. urgh. but we plowed through, not wanting to get stuck on the road at dusk given that animals here like to hop around the roads at that time of day. we arrived at our hostel in one piece, made dinner, played some pool and headed to bed. had to get up decently early to get to Monkey Mia and see the dolphins!

leaving the hostel at around 9am, we thought we'd given ourselves plenty of time to see the dolphins, as the books generally said they have up to 3 feedings a day with them, between 7:45am and 1pm. 9 seemed find. we arrived there and set up camp on the beach. it was nothing spectacular, but it was a beach, it was hot out and we were relaxing. i kept wondering when this horde of dolphins would turn up. yeah, well, apparently that day they did all 3 feeding before 9:30am! what a rip off! 4 dolphins did come close to shore. but all you can do is stand and look at them. can't get close, can't touch, etc. thankfully, we've seen enough dolphins in our day that we weren't too upset. an exciting aside: i got nipped by an angry little crab whom i must have stepped on whilst cooling myself off in the ocean. and, before we packed it in for the day, we did a small "hike" up a dune. that evening we enjoyed a drink whilst watching a beautiful sunset but got to bed relatively early as we were hitting the road again and didn't want to put it off for too long.

next morning we left denham (little village) and drove on to our next destination: coral bay. on our way there, we stopped at shell beach. this beach is made up entirely of shells. billions upon billions of little white shells. when it rains, something chemical happens and the shells kind of cement together over time. back in the day, they used to cut bricks out of it. many of the old buildings in the shark bay heritage area are made of shell bricks. kind of neat, really.

next stop: Stromatolites! as you all know, john and i are nerdy. we accept that. so this was a rather exciting stop on our trip. just before leaving shark bay, we stopped at hedlands pond to see the stromatolites. for those of you not in the know, stromatolites are living rocks. they are the basis of all life on earth, the first things to ever produce oxygen, etc. without stromatolites, life as we know it would not exist. and lucky for australians (and nerdy tourists) hedlands pond is one of the only (if not the only) place on earth where they can still be found, thanks in part to it's extremely saline waters and pristine conditions. so, we thought this one needed a stop!

it's pretty unexciting set up. a caravan park, a general store and an old telegraph station you can pay to get into. we just followed the little path down to the beach. there is a small boardwalk that you are asked to use so as not to disrupt the stromatolites. a little "guide" stromatolite on placards explains things as you walk around. a large variety exist. it really was quite interesting. we slowly made our way back to the car and drove off.

after leaving shark bay, we continued along the great northern highway to carnarvon. handy ravel tip in australia #2: don't be fooled by the word "great highway". i think aussies use "great" to it to trick you into thinking it's going to be a good road or something. but no. think northern ontario roads, throughout the entire state. good times.

carnarvon is a small town, pop. 6000. interesting fact though, it produces 70% of all WA's produce! we stopped into a local grower's shop and picked up some fresh stuff to eat in coral bay. and had the most delicious home made mango ice pop dipped in chocolat. mmmm. we continued along to coral bay that day, making very few stops, save the "pull-over-to-pee" and the "pull-over-to-grab-a-snack" breaks. again, we wanted to get off the roads early so as not to run into any kangaroos. and given the quantity of dead 'roos by the side of the road, it seems like a common thing to do. another interesting tidbit: nothing (and i mean NOTHING) smells quite as rotten as a decomposing 'roo in the roasting australian sun. it is rank! you could smell it for a few minutes in your car. disturbing, really.

just as we we're getting into coral bay, we did see a few wild emus crossing the highway. i'm very much intrigued by emu's, so i was quite excited. we pulled into coral bay in time to drop our stuff off, talk a short walk along the beach, have a drink on our patio and watch the sunset.

next up: coral bay.
xo