Blogs from Monkey Mia, Western Australia, Australia, Oceania - page 4

June 21 Getting into some semblance of rhythm here. You can never be fully settled because our days depend totally on weather. There are no weekends…only days we go out & days we don’t. Today was the latter. Too windy. On non-boat days I’ve gone on two ~10 km walks out to Red Bluff near Monkey Mia. Got to get some energy out on the windy days. Looking at fin pics and entering data makes you loopy after about 5 straight hours. Seen emus, wallabies, zebra finches (they don’t just live in pet stores) and all sorts of other creatures. No thorny devils, echidnas, or bilby just yet. Red bluff is appropriately named after the burnt burgundy coloured earth. That’s not a good colour description. You kind of have to see it. Where outback meets the ... read more

Day 2 Leg 2: Kalbarri - Monkey Mia Our accommodation in Kalbarri was quite nice, with enough room to swing a cat and everything. No cooker but we had our own. We've decided to cook all our meals ourselves rather than spend our money on overpriced restaurants....we have to save that for fuel. The price seems to be creeping up the further we head north. No sense in grumbling though as without it we wouldn't go anywhere! It's comforting to know we've got 40L in the tray...just in case. Since we didn't have a chance to really see much of Kalbarri the night before, nothing more than a nice cliffside and a sunset, we drove up to Kalbarri National Park to see some interesting natural rock formations and assuage our need to DO something. There's no ... read more

Starting at Monkey Mia meant that today we didn't have to drive at all in the morning as we were within walking distance of the main attraction. Despite the name, the main thing to see here are actually some 'wild' dolphins which come to the beach to be fed each morning. In my opinion this makes them as wild as a pet cat. Still, it was nice to see the dolphins close up, although the large number of people and the way the dolphins were led along following the food make it seem more of a circus act than anything. There were also several pelicans wandering about on the beach. They are such odd looking birds! After the act was finished, we ended up just generally lounging about on the beach for several hours, taking the ... read more

Day 2 of our roadtrip had us driving up to Monkey Mia which is a small tourist resort in the Shark Bay Marine Park famous for the daily feeding of bottlenose dolphins. As we began our drive North of Geraldton we began to notice the difference in our surroundings. The wildflowers that we had been driving through the day before were beginning to thin out and were replaced by the great Australian bush. We were also beginning to drive for longer distances without passing another person on the road; at some points the road stretched out for miles ahead of us without another single vehicle on it. The temperature had also begun to change; we had finally left the grey skies of Perth behind and were driving into beautiful sunshine...and heat. On the long stretches we ... read more

Packed up camp early early, crack a dawn early and headed 28 kms to Monkey Mia, got to the national park and got us a nice , shaddy spot with grass (luxury) to camp on. We also got a family of Layer birds thrown in for free. . . not to be confused with EMOOOOS We took a stroll through the camping grounds , checking out the whole complex - it's a pretty awesome set up there. With heaps of tours and walks and excursions to par take on. The tourist dollar is guzzled up round the place. You can take a ride on a boat out to a pearl farm, go on a nature walk, hire a canoe for 3 hours and go fishing on the other side, sunset tours, underwater tours, this and that ... read more