Sunday 22nd May
Not exactly a testing drive today, but to be honest we had conflicting advice on whether to stay at Denham or Monkey Mia so rather than make a decision we stayed at both. Call me indecisive if you will.
Monkey Mia is famous for it's dolphins. The same families of dolphins have been coming to Monkey Mia since the 60's, not unlike some of the people in the caravan park. Early on in the piece people would feed the dolphins by hand on the beach. This feeding has become a little more scientific over the years in an attempt to not “corrupt” the dolphins and render them incapable of hunting and feeding themselves. This was of great interest to me because that's how Di trained me, she fed me when we were sharing a flat together and rendered me incapable of hunting and feeding myself. Where were the scientists then ?
Proof reader's note: ......Well as Rube used to say "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach"
Like the Ningaloo Reef, Monkey Mia appears in all Around Australia traveller's stories so we were pleased to see that it hadn't been spoiled.
It is however very windy, an occupational hazard on the West Coast, but we managed to walk alomg the beach, catch some dolphins frolicking in the bay and to watch some of the videos at the information centre. Unfortunately they didn't have any NCIS so we watched videos of the dolphins and local area.
We would have taken some photo's of the camels, on the beach for the Camel Trek but the camel handler was even grumpier than the camels – at least he didn't spit. Although I think he got close when the Asian tourists continued to take photo's without paying for a ride.
 |
| Di deep in thought at a planning session |
Continuing with the nature theme we even managed a walk out into the nature reserve and back along the beach before resuming our more usual activities with wine o'clock (inside MM, out of the wind).
 |
| Di deep in the Australian Bush on a nature ramble |
Steve got excited tonight when he realised that we could watch the Spanish GP on the laptop via One HD live streaming. Yet again Steve was disappointed by Telstra and/or One HD. We did get to see almost a minute and a half of the pre-show before it stopped working.
Monday 23rd May
Up early this morning to see the dolphin feeding. Unfortunately the dolphins weren't up early. Mind you it did give us the opportunity to grab a proper cappuccino from the cafe. (reasonably priced actually and surprisingly. Although to be fair the whole resort hasn't been too bad on the prices given their location and captive market).
While waiting for the dolphins the lady running the show had to work through her repertoire of filler material and was able to tell us where the pelicans are. See I didn't keep you in suspense too long. Right. The pelicans are in South Australia, on holiday. Actually they are at Lake Eyre. Because of the rains and the fact that Lake Eyre has water in it, the pelicans have been a bit slow in returning to the coast. Amazing, this blog is a regular Richard Attenborough show!
The dolphins did eventually show up at 8:30, which was very kind of them. The 50 or so people on the beach were very grateful. Amazing, amazing animals. Actually we were very lucky with the crowd, there's normally a lot more people here. In fact on Easter Sunday they beat the previous record, when 800 people turned up to see 4 dolphins. Yep 200 people per dolphin.
Excitement over it was time for a quick shower and hit the road for Carnarvon.
No comments:
Post a Comment