Monkey Mia

Many people have told me - Monkey Mia is over rated and avoid it.  The actual place is a resort located +- 20kms from Denham, the nearest town. It's very much a couples resort and I felt the odd one out. The beaches are perfect and you get a chance to have dolphin swim next to you. The only downside, is the area is called Shark Bay. Yep - Tiger Sharks are common.

Scene from Jaws. Don't go in the water!!!!

During the afternoon, the dolphins came in and socialised with eachother as swimmers where in the water. You could stay in the water, but could not touch them or swim. Just stand still and admire. They came in between the people in the water and did their own thing. 

HEY - Feed me!!

The volunteer ranges getting ready to the feed the dolphins. Only 5 dolphins are fed by ranges and they are given minimal fish to ensure they go out and hunt for their food. ie don't loose their natural knowledge to hunt. The ranges pick a bystander and they get to put a small fish into the mouth of the dolphin. I was not picked. :(

Lemon Sharks being fed at the aquarium near Denham. Very informative tour. 

Beach at Monkey Mia. Perfect.

I have seen several snakes on this trip. All whilst in the car. I had stopped on most occasions for a pic, but they all scurried away, except for this bloke. Raised up ready to strike, but I felt safe in my car. No idea what snake it is.

Stumpy Lizards all over the roadside. You played dodgems on the road to avoid them. Many did not make it, but I never it one. These stumpy tailed lizards are much quicker than the  usual blue tongued lizard. 

Lookout view from a place between Carnarvon and Monkey Mia. Very desolate country. 

Hamelin Pools. Stromatolites. These rock features grow 0.3 mm per year.

Carnarvon

I am falling in love with the WA coast. Every seaside town I stay at, the coastal views are just breathtaking. School holidays have finished and this means the end of the busy season. Some tourtisty spots, shops have closed down for 4-5 month. 

I spent three nights at Carnarvon and it is a gorgeous place, except for the wind. I was told by a regular visitor to Exmouth, that his mates don't come to Exmouth from Oct on wards to fish, due the wind. Every day for the last week, we have had strong wind warnings. 

1 Mile Jetty. One of the longest in the southern hemisphere built in the late 1800's. It was an effort getting to the end and a breeze coming back. That was due to the strong winds. 2 fisherman sheltered away from the wind were fishing in the turbulent water but had only caught a dart. As I was leaving, a turtle came up to the surface. Almost a metre in diameter I was mezmarised by the animal. As I was getting the camera ready, the turtle headed down again. Only on the surface for about 15 seconds. So no photo :(

End of the jetty looking back to land.

Start of the jetty.

Carnarvon, whilst being famous for it's coastal area, is also known as being an integral part of the Apollo missions and getting Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin & others to the moon. Carnarvon had a NASA tracking station which monitored the spacecraft's vital systems and also the astronauts heath - ie blood pressure, heart beats etc. Whilst the base is now closed, you can visit a museum giving you more insight into the 1960's space program, Carnarvon's place in history and view the dishes.  They have a life sized capsule which you sit in and they simulate blast off and the various stages of rocket separation. 

Gascoyne River - Empty now, but in a few months there will be a raging torrent of water going through here.

This fella (big BOY) and another male mate were alongside the road. I'd rather his another car than him. Huge!!

Quobbo I think, is a national park, if not, an area not far out of Carnarvon on the coast. It's famous for it's blow holes, but given the gale force winds, I wasn't in the mood to get drenched, but there should be some great photos. In the Quobbo area there are 42 shantys over looking the water and in the sand dunes,  which I assume in the busy season, this place is packed.This time of year, only 1 shanty had occupants. It's 1 star accom but I reckon this place would rock with great weather, plenty of booze and night life. The day after's hangover would be spent swimming over the reef or surfing. 

It's a national park so no fishing. What you see below are millions of shells - maybe muscles attached to the rocks

42 sea shantys.

The countryside.

Goats galaore. 100's of them sighted near the road heading south from Carnarvon.

Swerved to miss this critter and then stopped and took some photos. 

Exmouth has 1,000's of termite mounds.

Exmouth

Have spent three days in Exmouth with the hope of wetting a line. However, like Fowlers Bay in Sth Aus, the wind is blowing a gale. Exmouth's claim to fame is being at the northern end of the Ningaloo Reef. Many people in WA has stated it's better than the great barier reef and far more accessible as it starts only a few metres offshore. Much of the area south of Exmouth is classified as a national park so there is no commercial or recreational fishing.

Ningaloo Reef plays host to a massive coral infrastructure that brings in the usual northern fish critters, but also, the whale shark, humpback whales and manta rays. Whale shark and whale season is now over but we are in the last weeks of the manta ray season. Tours venture out to the best spots allowing you to snorkel and swim with the whale sharks and manta rays. With the wind in Exmouth, all the tour operators (fishing and sightseeing) have cancelled their trips. However I'm off to Coral Bay for 2 nights, maybe 3, tomorrow (+- 150 km) , so fingers crossed the wind dies down. Forecast is for light wind from Sat onwards.

On the advice from the Tackle World experts at Exmouth, I went to the SS Mildura wreck which is close to shore. On low tide, walk on the now exposed rocks, 150 metres until the rocks stop and you are now at the drop off. Cast your poppers and you could hopefully land a GT. It's a sport fish only, not for the table, but apparently pulls like a train. 2 casts and I packed it in. As I was walking on the rocks towards the ocean, looking for crabs and small fish still within the rock pools, I knew this was going to be a futile effort due to the wind. But I had to try.

The SS Mildura looks far away at high tide, but once low tides kicks in, you can almost walk to it. It was a 1,394 tonne cargo steam ship and was ship wrecked at Lighthouse Bay  in 1907 with a load of bullocks heading to Fremantle. All crew swam safely to shore, however many of the cattle perished.  The captain was found negligent in his duties and lost his right to captain for 3 months.

SS Mildura - High Tide

SS Mildura - Low Tide

Check out some of the green coloured crabs in some of the rock pools. A little too small for the cooking pot. However I understand you can get mud crabs in the area. Left my crab net at home..... At least the weather is a beautiful 32 degrees.

Crab resting in a very small water hole

Emus galore in Exmouth. 2 resident but still wild emus wander the caravan park, hoping for a free feed from a muppet tourist or scavenging from the bins. No fear of humans and come to within 1 metre of you, looking at what you are typing on the computer. One muppet camper arrived yesterday and big noted himself whilst feeding them from his hand. When he ran out, they wanted more and gave him a kick. It would have hurt and yes I had a big grin.

Note for next time - bring your own flippers and face mask for snorkeling.

Karratha & Dampier

The trip from Broome to Karratha is a boring one, with little change in scenery. However I'm glad I was in a car rather than a motorbike (first time I had that feeling on this trip - I miss my motorbike and the freedom it gave me). The wind was howling, and made for some eye watering sand storms. When an oncoming road train passed me (going in th opposite direction) the pressure wave of wind hitting the car was like a sand paper dump. I hated that feeling, so I slowed down when they approached and moved as far left as I could.

Sand and strong winds. Felt and sounded like sandpaper rubbing. 

I'm staying in a motel in Karratha which is 18 km's from Dampier. Karratha has a population of around 20,000 whilst Dampier has much less. Karratha is the dominant living town, whilst Dampier is the working town for Rio Tinto iron ore, BHP salt and North West Shelf Project. Dampier has so many apartment style blocks which looked abandanded. I suspect most of the population works in or around Dampier but lives in Karratha. Karratha has a bakery!!! So looking forward to fresh bread rolls.

Dampier, on the coast is so far, my favourite seaside place. I wish we still had our 6.5 mtr ocean going boat so we could visit the Dampier Archipelago, which consists of 42 islands within a 45 km radius from Dampier. No beach boat ramps, they have proper concrete ones. I also wish I had a 4wd to drive to some isolated land based fishing sites. Oh well, next time.

Dampier harbour

Dampier is also the base for the north west shelf project. Gas and oil is sucked from the ocean floor from several sea riggs 145 kms off shore. The oil / gas is pumped via underwater pipes back to Dampier where it is processed and the gas is piped to Perth, via overland pipes or shipped overseas with the oil via tankers.

This huge site receives the gas and oil from offshore and does it's magic to purify and separate it ready for distribution. It's a very involved process as the gas contains other chemicals / gasses that are not wanted.

3 massive underground liquid gas storage containers. If I can remember the facts from the North West Shelf Project info centre, the liquid gas is stored at about minus 160 C.

"Red" dog - famous in the Pilbara. Died in 1979. If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, do yourself a favour....

Dampier Lawn Bowls Club - for those of you interested in cheap beer :)

Broome

Broome is a very picturesque town. The water colour differs based on the water depth from a translutent blue/green close to shore to a dark blue further offshore. Like Port Hedland, the tides are enormous which gives natures lovers or avid photographers the chance to walk in the shallows at low tide and check out the various sea life. Small crabs the size of a 10 cent piece, burrowing at the first sign of my big feet and shells with the animals still in them sliding like a snail in the sand.

As the beaches have a slight decline into the ocean, when the tide goes out (low tide) it goes out for 200-500 metres. This means at high tide, the water depth for the first 100-200 metres going out to sea, is typically only 0.5-1.5 metres deep, which is a little low for swimming as you occasionally need to dodge rocks and tree roots and the occasional broken beer bottle some stupid muppet threw into the drink.

Like the rocky beaches surrounding the Broome township, the water colour at Cable beach is breath taking with white'ish sand. Cable beach is about 6 km from the main township of Broome, and it's the famous beach on all Broome post cards. I do like Broome as you can just relax and enjoy the great views or get into more adventurous activities. Would I fly from the east of Aus to Broome and pay the ridiculous motel / hotel prices, nope!! I will come back, lower temps and do more of the adventure activities. My time here was to relax.

When I get back, I will be checking at Dans Murphy, if they have a beer brewed in Broome, from a place called, Matso's. Mango Beer. It doesn't sound too great, however the mango flavour is not
overpowering and it's a great drop.

Broome is the only township I have encountered that has the local prison in the middle of town. I'd say it's about 300-500 meters from MacDonalds. Broome market was your average regional style, but what did catch my eye was 3 stalls of photographers selling their photos. Almost purchased one for a friend, but the chance of damage coming home was high and I know I have some pretty good photo's of my own. But I have their business card and website details, just in case mine don't look great blown up :)

The caravan parks in Broome have very few campers and caravaners. Cabins appear to ahve about a 30% occupancy rate. It's school holidays in WA and yet they are empty. I suspect it's because it's a long  way from Perth to Broome, approx 1,800kms and the heat. However, Karajini National Park was filling up very quickly during the school holidays and it was hotter.

The weather is starting to heat up. One of the 3 days in Broome, the humidity was over 94%. (constant dripping of wetness). If you sleep beyond 7am, most of the tents / campervans become saunas. At 9am, it's about 33 degrees and by 10am, mid to late 30's. According to the weather forecasters, the Kimberleys, further north are already posting +40 degrees with a rise in humidity.

I enjoy warm weather, but this constant heat and humidity to starting to get to me. It gets hot, so quick, that you can't venture out in the morning and then relax in the afternoon.  So I've decided to abandon my adventure going north and will head south along the coast of Western Aus. Visiting places like Karratha, Dampier, Ningaloo Reef, Exmouth, Coral Bay, Moneky Mia and more. I had my heart set on a northern adventure, but the lack of a 4wd or motorbike to drive on dirt roads and the heat, just means I'll have to come again, 2-3 months earlier in the year, some time in the future.

So it's off to Karratha and Dampier, 833km's south.

Port Hedland

Port Hedland is a shipping town for BHP and Fortesque Metals with Gina Reighardt building docks and facilities that will be operational early next year. The mining companies are planning to double the number of docks over the next 5+ years. I wonder if these plans will continue given the significant price drop of iron ore over the past 6 months.

Fortesque Metals use 4 trailer road trains, known as quads. Over a 24 hour period, 630 trucks come into the docks and unload their precious iron ore load which is loaded directly into the ships. Mining is a 24/7 business so that means that the shipping towns like Port Hedland, and Dampier (Rio Tinto) operate 24/7.

A man from the permanent caravan site behind me told me he was made redundant today. A sparky at BHP. He was not happy about it and many were laid off that day. However these small 50-100 lay offs don't make the news. He said he will still stay in Port Hedland and find other work, but not as good paying. I suspect his wife is still working for BHP and she will now be bringing home the bacon. A lot of it.

Salt is also shipped from Port Hedland. There are huge evaporation meadows outside Port Hedland and once they can harvest the salt, it is road trained to the docks.

The tides in this part of WA are huge. Check out the jetty. It has three layers for people to get on/off boats. I took a seafearers boat trip. I thought it was a tour of the harbour, but it was working at the same time. This boat goes to all the foreign tankers and brings sailors ashore. The sailors have a place to stay and the seafairers group transfer them around Port Hedland so they can do their shopping, socialising etc. Typically a sailor will have 24-48 hours in each port, whilst the ship is being loaded / unloaded, so rather than go stir crazy, they go ashore.

Look closely - lower deck completely under water

Lower deck dirty but usable.

Sunset takes about 20 min and is a beautiful site.

I have almost run out of data on my Telstra phone, so I am doing todays post at Broome MacDonalds. It is painfully slow, so I will upload more photos in 4 days time when I get alocated with abother 3gb.