Dolphins and Dugongs.

Monkey Mia- no monkeys but plenty of sea life, dolphins, sharks, rays, dugongs, (about 10,000 of them here- more than anywhere in the world) as well as turtles, and of course fish.

Each morning at 8am they feed the dolphins by hand on the shore, so we set to do the 46k from Denham very early.

Six dolphins came in for feeding, including a three day old pup, and they played in the shallows for a while before coming in to feed. A few children were invited to go in to the water to feed the adult animals, they are completely wild and the pup in particular should not be disturbed so it had to be well controlled.

Later we took a sunset cruise on a catamaran on the bay, it was rather windy so no sailing was done, but it was pleasant nevertheless, plenty of fresh salty air.








We had decided to make our way into the national park for a few days bush camping, as we travelled we came across a notice which advised us to reduce our tyre pressure, which we duly did. We soon found out why! Soft sand for miles, at times threatening to bog us down, but eventually we made it to the campsite. Unfortunately it was fully inhabited- by flies! Millions of them, and in addition it was so windy we changed our minds and decided to move on back to Monkey Mia.

But in between we took in some to the sights, Cape Peron is the most westerly point of mainland Australia, and from there we could look down into the water below and see rays gliding along, as well as great gatherings of cormorants on the shore.








Despite the fact we had to abort our camping trip it was an interesting day out, 150k on soft loose sand makes for interesting driving to say the least. The car tends to go where the sand wants it to go, which is not necessarily where you are steering!
Having made it back to Monkey Mia we found it was also very windy here, too much for the roof tent and little shelter for the ground tent either, so we had to settle for an expensive hotel room. Never mind- there is a lovely view from the balcony!