22 April 2013
Alarm set for 5am, going to see dolphins at 8am, alarm goes off, snooze button is hit! Alarm goes off again, snooze button is hit again! This was repeated over and over until it was 8.30am! Shit how are we ever going to go back to work!?
Anyway the story with the monkey mia dolphins is that they feed them three times in the morning between 8am and noon, now if the dolphins come in three times before 9am then that's it no more feeds, or they might come in at 8 and not come back till 11, I think you are getting the picture! Getting there by 8am means you will def see one feed. We missed that so decided just to pack up and head into shark bay and have a look around and we could visit the dolphins tomorrow.
From Hamilen it's another 100k into shark bay and 30k to monkey Mia from there. They have campgrounds outside of shark bay where you can stay for one night (they say its free but you have to pay a $10 booking fee when you book so it's $10!) we decided we would pull up there for the night but not really somewhere we could leave the van for the day so dragged the van behind us while we looked through shark bay and monkey Mia. Beautiful part of the country and probably the world too! Of course lots of people around but the roads are made for people towing vans or boats so plenty of room and parking to manoevour around. We decided to check out monkey Mia even though it was now 10.30. It is $8 pp to enter the marine park which is totally reasonable I think. Plenty of trailer parking. Nice information station as you walk up to the steps and straight onto the sand and water. Looked over to the water and there was a dolphin! So headed over and they had just decided to start the third feed for the day! Winning! Great timing! They get everyone into the water in a straight line about knee deep and the dolphins swim up and down along the line. Was incredible! Now not only are you in this picturesque part of aus but there are dolphins swimming at your feet. A lot of the talk they do before feeding them was interesting too! There are only 5 dolphins in the feeding program but this one dolphin comes everyday because she thinks she is in the feeding program and because her mum was in the program and she watched and came in with her everyday! Incredible the intelligence of them really. Anyway I could go on forever about these dolphins but basically when they feed them they ask everyone to get out of the water.
The noise of everyone leaving the water signals to the dolphins that it's feeding time, so you turn around and suddenly all the dolphins are there ready to be fed! The volunteers pick people at random to feed the dolphins, unfortunately we didn't get picked but some kids faces lit up when they got to feed them so that was cool! Monkey mia is a great place for lunch or a coffee too. Souvenir shop and cafe right on the water, we did try and get a spot in the resort for our van but it was all booked out. Few emus walking around, they are evil looking!
Well i didn't care what we did for the rest of the day, that was fantastic!
And we didn't do much! Haha we headed back to where we were going to camp for the night, did some beach fishing, nearly caught a seagull (the water is really shallow at the beach edge and calm so the birds could see the bait pilchard in the water so were diving in trying to get it!)
We stayed at Eage bluff which also has a boardwalk where you can walk and look down over the water and on high tide you can see sharks and dugongs and turtles and rays. Of course we got there on low tide so saw a big fat nothing! Dammit.
Bloody windy on the west coast! And you think that would stop the flys but no the little buggers love the wind! They stick to your face like nothing else and swishing of the hand does not make them move! I am now on the lookout for a hat with corks on it! If nothing else I am def getting a net to wear over my head! There is nothing worse than flies in ya face!
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