Leaving Exmouth behind we find ourselves
heading south once again to what will turn out to be one of the best food
experiences of the trip, Carnarvon.
Carnarvon is where 70% of WAs winter fruit
and veg is grown so after spending the afternoon we arrived walking out on the
one mile jetty and getting the Coffee Pot Train back, we spent the night
planning our attack for the next day, food day!
And food we got…juicy, sweet, succulent
mandarins, apples, oranges, eggplant, cucumber, zucchini, tomatoes (we had to
go back or another box as Bron and the
boys had eaten the first box before we finished doing the rounds) and perhaps
the highlight…the best banana smoothie know to mankind.
The next day we left, tummies happy,
cupboards stocked and on our way out we did what anyone would do…went back and
got another smoothie for breakfast, followed by 2 dozen fresh eggs and we were
off to Monkey Mia….or Denham more accurately.
Shark Bay turned out to be a little gem,
stopping at a beach made up of bout 6 feet of tiny miniature shells, seeing a
bay full of stromatalites, the oldest living thing in the world and seeing the
wind swept shear beauty of the cliffs and coastline with dolphins, sharks,
turtles and sting rays in the waters below.
We stayed at Denham, a cool little seaside
town with lots of charm and character but got up early to go and see the
dolphins at Monkey Mia the next morning, about a half hours drive.. Now standing in this water was cold…the best
strategy was to wait till your feet went numb so you couldn’t feel the cold and
then just not move….something that Lachie found very difficult!
The dolphins came though eventually and
played and frolicked which was cool to see and the 3 dolphins that got fed got
given only 4 fish each which meant about 12 people of the 200 with freezing
cold feet got to feed a dolphin. They do
this to keep the dolphins still wild. As
luck would have it Alex got called out so he and Lachie walked out and both
held on to the fish and fed it to the dolphin leaving us with two very happy
campers.
And now to perhaps the gem of the west
coast, Kalbarri. We drove inoff themain
road to be greeted with a coastline vista of waves crashing along the sndbank
and rocks at the mouth of a river that swept back along and ran parallel to the
beach. We stayed opposite this in the
centre of town, deciding to set up camp so our annexe faced out to the
playground beside us….did mean having to manouvre the trailer so the draw bar
was stuck in a thicket of bamboo…not the easiest thing to do in sand, but we
got there.
The next day saw the sun shining and me
blowing up our inflatable boat for the fist time in the trip…one wonders why we
chose a day with tempertures in the high teens and not further north in the
high twenties….but in an effort to use everything we brought we decided to use
the boat. And what a great morning it
was. Lachie, Alex and I rowed across the
river and there off the beach on the otherside was a whale and her calf in the
first line of breakers. Probably no more
than 30metres away the whales played and rolled and slapped their fins giving
us an incredible view of one of natures wonders.
We rowed back, a little harder against the
wind and the current and despite being asked by a couple of fishermen in a
tinnie whether we needed a tow, we got back to the main shore no probs. Bron and I then went across. Now time for the maths…the maximum weight of
the boat is 160kg…I was 100kgs when we left home and so we figured we would be
ok. WE got in, did a few circles while
we sorted ourselves out and as the photos afterwards that Alex took showed, I
sat about an inch above the water so either our maths is spot on or we were
lucky. Either way we got across, watched
the whales some more and rowed back with no problems.
The rest of Kalbarri was about riding bikes,
seeing incredible rugged and harsh coastal cliffs and a trip up into the
National Park where the highlight was Natures Window…a series of rocks high
above the valley with a big hole through the middle making a window to the
expansive view below. Oh, and I musn’t
forget the pelican feeding, except that the pelicans did! One did turn up on the last day but other
than that the kids all got to feed the seagulls instead.
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