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Published: November 13th 2009
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Day 200 - Denham to Whalebone, Shark Bay
Our alarm went off early this morning, we’d set it deliberately as we wanted to be able to get some more blogs uploaded before we left the caravan park for a bit more free camping. Each time I do this task early in the morning we inevitably get to catch up with Ed as he’s always up really late back home! It works very well and this morning was no exception. Thanks for the shout out Ed, always great to catch up with you.
With the wind having dropped overnight we were presented with another beautiful outlook this morning, a perfectly calm Indian ocean with a few yachts bobbing about on top. One fellow lady camper even remarked that it was a ‘million dollar view’, she’s probably not far wrong as most of the homes in Denham fetch nearly $700’000 these days!
Our time on the caravan parks is used to its fullest potential these days and unless we’re in for a very long driving day we try to avoid leaving until the last minute! We generally place water bottles in the freezer, especially if we’re going free camping as
it just helps keep the cool bag cold and we like to keep the fridge on electric for as long as possible. As it was we left the site at ten minutes to ten, our required time of departure.
Darryl posted the postcards and I checked out the free camp site procedure with the staff at the visitors centre. I immediately recognised one of the gentleman working there as Phil, the tour bus driver who took us to Francois Peron the last time we were here. It was his son, who I am now reminded is Duncan, that fascinated us both when we went out with them nearly two years ago. We were on a snorkelling our and they took us out to the Gregories area off Francois Peron where there’s a huge bay with reef running across its entrance. Our first snorkel was to the left of the bay so we all walked over there, in bare feet, carrying our flippers and snorkel masks. When we got round the corner Duncan came running back to us with a huge, enormous, revolting, highly venomous stonefish in between his flippers! He brilliantly showed us the spikes that are so venomous
The Old Pearler Restaurant
The bricks are made from tiny white shells and could inflict the most awful pain should you be unlucky enough to stand on one!! We then wished we could levitate into the water from our position just in front of the beach! The weather was quite windy that day and the water was very churned up, it certainly wasn’t a great day for snorkelling. Phil spotted a couple of dugong in the lagoon where we’d just been swimming and then Duncan took off at great speed into the water and came out carrying a turtle! He was so at home in the ocean it was all quite amazing. There were other little memories from that day like how I entered the boat after the second snorkel, nose first, but bless him Duncan was a hoot and a great young fellow and it’s good to hear that he’s still around the area and working in Ocean Park within Shark Bay putting his marine skills to good use no doubt!
Anyway, we were thinking of staying tonight at the Eagle Bluff camp spot but we’re advised Whalebone is much better and as yet nobody is booked in so technically we could have it to ourselves! We suspect not, but
anyway Whalebone it is and we set off on the short 26 km journey out of town.
Luckily it’s only a 1km drive off the main road because the access is heavily corrugated and by the time we pull up the clock has already fallen off the caravan wall and everything on the anti-slip matting has jumped around inside! It doesn’t take much corrugation to disrupt the old girl!
The site at Whalebone is beautiful, right on the ocean but as we suspected we haven’t got it to ourselves! There are two others camped here already but there’s plenty of space for us not to disturb their privacy and vice versa. We find a nice little spot and then go for a quick walk around to explore the area. It’s gorgeous and the outlook is even more spectacular up on the cliffs as you can look down over the ocean and easily spot marine life. We can immediately see large rays and a couple of small sharks as we walk along. Maybe we won’t be swimming here either, oh no we’re turning into a couple of cowards!
A nice spot of relaxing is in order until we’re
thoroughly bored with that and decide to go and see what Eagle Bluff has to offer! This is another of the Shark Bay world heritage listed sites and quire rightly so, it’s spectacular. A long boardwalk has been cleverly introduced so as not to disturb the dunes here and it enables us to have a birds eye view of the awesome coastline and Eagle Island beyond it. We see huge rays, shovel nose rays, turtles, small sharks and one enormous shark all swimming happily in the water below. It’s a fabulous site and we’ll definitely return tomorrow for another look.
Another couple are already up here chatting away about Ocean Park and a young chap who got a stonefish out of a tank to show them, it sounds too familiar for it not to be Duncan who we mentioned earlier - and it was! Bless him, it seems old habits die hard!
On the way back to the Whalebone camp we stop off at the area where camping is permitted at Eagle Bluff and then at Fowlers camp. Both of them are lovely with beautiful outlooks but we’re happy with the decision we made to stay at Whalebone,
too late to move now!
It’s really windy when we return but I nip out to do a bit of ‘toilet preparation’ ready for the morning! There are no facilities here so we need to dig our own and it needs to be a long way from where people are camping. Unfortunately there is quite a lot of rubbish around the area, glass bottles, plastic bottles, bait containers, food containers, toilet paper and worse still it seems that people have placed their ‘doings’ in plastic bags and then buried them in the sand dunes just beyond the camp sites. There are no rubbish bins here and people should be capable of removing all of their litter but seemingly some are not.
It sparks quite a good conversation about why, as a World Heritage listed area, there are not more facilities here. Surely it would be better for the environment if there was at least a drop toilet at the camp area or near to the main road rather than people doing their business anywhere and leaving it behind in plastic bags with trails of used loo roll blowing around. Personally, even being the huge fans of free camping
that we are, we would rather pay a small amount for facilities to be introduced along this stretch of the coast than to see the build up of rubbish left behind by people that obviously have little or no respect for the area. There is of course the argument that even if there were rubbish bins or toilets around people may not use them but at least it’s more likely and would surely reduce the needless deposits of crap.
It’s a crying shame to see such beauty being disrespected.
The wind has really picked up now but as the sun goes down, occupants of a tour bus attempt to make it up the nearby cliff to watch the sky turn to a red glow. We rig up the tripod inside the caravan in an attempt to capture the sunset but avoid the wind! It’s a reasonable success but the sunset wasn’t that splendid this evening so we’re not too gutted to have spent it inside our little protection zone!
Hours later and it’s still blowing a gale outside and the night sky is alive with stars but we’re tucked in the caravan watching Pirates of the Caribbean
- Dead Man’s Chest and hoping that no scary ship wrecked lunatics appear out of our ocean tonight!
Much love to all
Captain Dar and first mate Sar
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