Western Australia Road Trip – Shark Bay
Next stop on our trip was Shark Bay, home to the famous village of Monkey Mia.
Monkey Mia is often one of the first places people think of when pondering Western Australia. For over 50 years dolphins have been visiting its shores, getting up close and personal with the local people. The history of this tradition isn’t the prettiest however as it is only relatively recently that controls have been in place to control the human-dolphin interaction. Today’s guides tell stories of people feeding the animals all kinds of junk, like hot dogs and cigarettes and teaching them to perform tricks. These days, sense prevails and the dolphins are fed a limited amount of fish and touching is an absolute no-no.
Unbelievable to me, is that the family of dolphins that visit Monkey Mia today is in fact the same family that have been visiting for over 30 years. At present there are three generations of the same family visiting, babies, mother and grandmother!
Dolphin interaction starts at around 8am so we got there early, much to the disappointment that the place was already packed. We watched the presentation as the crew talked us all through what was going on and fed the dolphins a few fish. Once the show was over, the crowd quickly dispersed. Then, something magical happened! After about 10 minutes, the dolphins all came back to shore and the show started all over again – except this time with a fraction of the spectators, giving us the opportunity to really get close in and appreciate these beatiful sea-dogs in their habitat.
As the guides tell it, they do three feeds per day all between 8am and 12pm, and it is up to the dolphins to decide when those feedings happen between those times. Lucky for us they decided that they wanted all their breakfast before 9.30am as most of the crowd had called it a day after the first visit meaning we could have much more of an intimate experience.
During the first feed of the morning
5 minutes after the first feed had finished!
Sonia getting her feet wet
My next favourite part of the Shark Bay area was the Stromatolites – something I’d not heard of before our trip but once I’d read some info in the guide books I knew I had to see them.
Shark Bay is one of the only places in the world (2 i think – needs fact checking!!) that has Stromatolites – and they represent the earliest forms of life on earth. They are often referred to as living fossils due to their closeness to how they were at the dawn of life. The ones in this area are over 3000 years old themselves and are only possible due to the rare chemical makeup of the sea water around them.
We were the only ones there at the time we visited and I found it as close to a spiritual experience as I think I’ve ever had – standing in a scene that could have looked the same 2 billion years ago at the very dawn of evolution.
The boardwalk out over the stromatolites
Close by to the Stromatolites was an old shell quarry. In this area gazillions of tiny shells have washed ashore and compacted and provided early settlers here with a resource to mine. Bricks were cut straight out of the ground and used in construction of various kinds of buildings. This practice has ended now in the interest of environmental preservance.
Shell beach, also close by, gave us a look at what these tiny shells looked like before they got compacted and turned into bricks. The tiny scale of these shells against the huge expanse of the beach which they make up is really hard to comprehend. These two pics above give some indication but to be there blew my mind. Not even the insanely strong wind on that day could put me off! (and I hate wind!).
This whole trip inspired Sonia and I to set up a web site that showcases all of our favourite photos from around Australia and NZ and this is part of the reason there has been such a gap between my WA trip blog posts, so go check out what all the fuss is about over on www.OzTravelGallery.com and let us know what you think.
Become a fan of OzTravelGallery on Facebook here
