DAY 90 - DOLPHINS AT MONKEY MIA….

Today we were heading to Monkey Mia, which is about 25 kms from Denham.

We were off to see the Dolphins in their natural habitat.  This is only something you would do once as it was terribly over rated.  For a start we had to pay $9 each (concessional rate) just to get down onto the beach.    

Views of Little Lagoon with the sun shining on it.

There is no town or such at Monkey Mia although there is a resort, which wasn’t too bad.  The beach is nice, lovely cream coloured sand and there are a couple of jetties you can walk out on. 

Arriving at Monkey Mia

Once upon a time, you could actually hop into the water with the dolphins and feed them, but you can’t do that anymore.  Now you just get to observe them from the beach.    The rangers aren’t even feeding them anymore, because they found that when they were feeding them all the time, the babies were not able to survive in the wild, therefore they want them to learn the skills for catching their own food supply. 

Initially we didn’t even think we were going to see the dolphins, as they hadn’t been in earlier.  However, around mid-morning, (just as we had ordered our morning tea) about 5 came right into shore, so most of us went down onto the beach to watch them. 

It just so happened that as they came in, Sarah face timed us so that we could talk to the children.  We were able to share with them the dolphins swimming up close, so in a sense that at least made the cost of getting onto the beach a little more worthwhile. 

We spent the morning at Monkey Mia, it was quite windy and much too cold to go swimming so we ended up back at the resort where we found a table, out of the cold wind, on their balcony and ordered ourselves a hot drink and some freshly cooked muffins.

Morning tea at Monkey Mia

It was close to lunchtime when we left, we had a drive around the boat ramp area where we were able to get some good shots of further up the beach. 

 This is where we saw the camels on the beach, and also got some contrasting photos of the very red cliffs that framed the white sands of the beach.   It was really very pretty.

As we were leaving, we also saw a few more wild emus and were fortunate enough to get a photo of at least one of them as he crossed the road.  

Little Lagoon

On our way back into Denham, we stopped one more time to explore the “Little Lagoon”.  Steve had noticed a dirt track heading off the main road the previous day and it looked as if it went down to the white sands of the waterfront.  He was keen to explore, so we took off down this dirt road to find that it did indeed end up on the shores of “The Little Lagoon”.  We drove along the beach for a kilometre or so.  There were quite a few people down here fishing, so Steve was eager to drop me back home and head back out for a fish.

As we approached Denham, we noticed a sign for raw honey.  Since we couldn’t cross the border into WA with any honey, we hadn’t had a chance to replace our honey supply, so when we saw the sign, we were keen to at least get a bottle and try out some of the Western Australian Honey.  We ended up buying a bottle of their Wildflower Honey (pretty expensive $10 and $15 for a bottle of their jarrah honey).  

Our final stop before heading home was to call into the Bakery in town and pick up a couple of homemade pies for lunch.  We also notice that they sold green milk, not lime like in Queensland, but rather spearmint milk.  Anything is worth a try once, so we got a carton of it to share between us.  Different would be the only way I would describe it.  

Steve was keen to head back out and go for a fish, whilst I needed to get our washing back in off the line.  Steve ended up heading back out to some of the places we had checked earlier today for a fish, meanwhile I stayed home and got my work done and then had a rest.

I must admit it was nice to just chill out for the afternoon.  We have been so busy these last couple of weeks with no real down time, so I for one was pleased to have this time just to chill rest and catch up on my blog.  

Steve had a great afternoon, catching another feed of fish.  He was a little late home, as he had to fuel up and then fillet the fish in town, as you are not allowed to do it at the caravan park.  He got home just on dinnertime.

Dinner again tonight was to be held at John and Barbs.  The weather here is atrocious at the moment with cold gale force winds, so once again their site seemed to be the most sheltered from the wind.  Again, we had another reasonably early night as none of us wanted to sit out in the cold night air.