Monkey Mia: Home to Friendly Dolphins and the Elusive Kangaroo!

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Monkey Mia has held a special place in our hearts ever since we first traveled the west coast of Australia back in 2006. Therefore, when we found out that Air Asia had cheap flights from Kuala Lumpur into Perth, we couldn't resist the chance to show Australia to Kyla and Jake (their last continent, other than Antarctica), and specifically the magic of Monkey Mia.



We had ten days in total. This seemed quite short to Scott and I given our recent slow pace of travel, but was in fact a lifetime compared to the average visitor, who tends to stay only a night or two. Monkey Mia is famous for its friendly dolphins. It's the only place in the world that I know of where dolphins that are completely wild and in their natural habitat interact so closely with humans. Each morning, starting about 7:45am, the rangers gather a group of tourists down on the beach for the dolphin feeding. This practice was started a generation or two ago by locals but is now highly regulated by the park rangers, with each dolphin receiving a pre-weighed amount of fish. This ensures that they still need to hunt and be self sustainable for the vast majority of their diet, rather than relying on humans.



Although we would often hang around during the dolphin feeding time, the kids never actually fed the dolphins (though I got to on my last morning!) This was mainly because it was too crowded for the kids and they couldn't sit through the lengthy talk by the rangers beforehand. Instead, we preferred to just hang out on the beach and keep an eye out for the dolphins later in the day. They would often cruise up and down the beach, just being curious and checking out the scene. If you stood in the water waist deep, the dolphins would often pass right by you. Kyla and Jake even had them pass right below them while sitting on a kayak borrowed from another family!



Monkey Mia isn't just about the dolphins though. There are a lot of other ocean critters that can be seen at close quarters if you just wade out and stay still in the shallows, watching for shadows. Daily we saw turtles, marble rays, eagle rays and even a small shark swim by us. The kids, predictably, had a much shorter attention span for spotting animals than us, so they would often sit on the beach and dig while mommy and daddy waded out.



One day, Scott left me at the swimming pool with the kids while he went down to swim laps in the ocean. Because of the status of being a tiger shark breeding ground, we tended to stay on the sandy area, not swimming out as far as the drop off, where the tigers purportedly patrol. I was surprised to see him come back after only ten minutes. Apparently he overheard one of the commercial boats saying, "It looks like the tiger shark is heading to the beach!" Not really something you want to hear when you're swimming! Looking back on the day, we'd commented that the dolphins had been noticeably missing compared to prior days. Locals confirmed that the dolphins must have been aware of the tiger's presence and were avoiding the beach area.



Speaking of boats, we splashed out on a half-day boat trip with the promise of dugongs and other wildlife spotting opportunities. While we did see dugongs, it was kind of like when you go whale-watching: you mostly just see a dark lump breaking the surface of the water. All in all, it honestly wasn't worth the money for people like us who've already seen a lot just by swimming, snorkeling and diving. Still, we had to do it! The funny part was that the big thing seemed to be riding in the boom net. This is a net attached to the back of the boat and you sit in it and get dragged along in the water. I persuaded Jake to get in with me but Kyla wouldn't. When the boat picked up speed, it was a toss up between holding onto my little guy or my bikini bottoms. Somehow I managed to lose neither!



While Monkey Mia is mostly about marine animals, it also has some iconic land animals. The emus are the most prevalent, and can be seen walking along the beach and around the resort. There are also kangaroos in the area but, being nocturnal, are much harder to spot. We heard from a couple we met that they'd left Monkey Mia at 8pm one night to drive to the nearest town 26km away and had seen kangaroos everywhere, even just hanging out in the middle of the road. We had to try it! Just as it was getting dark that night, we all jumped into our car and set off on a kangaroo safari. We were a little nervous about one jumping right in front of our car and so drove really slowly at about 30km/hr on a road marked as 110km/hr. In an hour of driving, we saw three snakes by the road but not a single kangaroo, despite the iconic kangaroo-crossing signs! We gave up and went home, annoyed at having messed up bedtime for nothing!



Not to be beaten, we asked around the next day and were told that the "roos" like to hang out close to the camp entrance at about 5:30pm, by a water spout for the construction trucks, or up a hill where there's a small watering hole. That evening, we set off again on a kangaroo safari. We first checked the water spout - nothing. We then went to check out the hill, but it was now part of the construction site with a "no entry" sign. It was just a long empty sandy red road leading up into promising-looking bush territory so we went for it. There were still no roos but I did see some cute little mouselike things hopping around (maybe a bilby?)



Score so far - Kangaroos 2, Tomasis 0



Given that all the locals were telling us that the kangaroos are "everywhere" and "you can't miss them", we were still determined not to be beaten! I came up with a different plan - if we were having no luck at night, maybe we should try first thing in the morning, before any other cars had scared them off the road.



The perfect day to do it (and in fact the only day left at this stage) was the day we were leaving Monkey Mia. We woke up with our alarm at 4:40am and finished packing up the room in semi-darkness while the kids continued to sleep. We then packed up the car in the dark as best we could, got the kids up and dressed, and set off on our last ditch attempt to find what seems to be the elusive kangaroo. About 15 minutes into the drive, I spotted a brown lump on the opposite side of the road - a kangaroo! Scott slammed on the brakes and we watched him for a moment as he watched us, before hopping right in front of our car and disappearing into the bush! At least we'd seen one! As we neared the town of Denham at sunrise, we had high hopes of finding more as this is where we'd heard they hang out in larger numbers. We checked out the areas we'd been told about, including the beach to the edge of town, but nothing. Accepting defeat, we decided to start on our journey back down south. At least we had a very early start on the trip! As we were leaving town, I suddenly noticed a kangaroo in the bush. Again, scott slammed on the brakes and we reversed to get a better luck. The kangaroo started to hop away and we realized it was actually a group of three! Then an amazing thing happened. The three kangaroos' hopping startled their buddies hiding in the bush and next thing we knew, a group of 10 to 15 kangaroos started hopping around, two of them dashing across the road right in front of us! Finally, on our way out of town, we'd beaten the elusive Australian kangaroo! Now all that remained to do was to cover the 500 or so miles to Perth over the next couple days!





*** Scroll right down for more dolphin photos **

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