Shark Bay - from Lisa

From the surfing enclave of Gnarloo we continued to head down the coast. The sudden cooling of the weather and ocean as we travelled southward was refreshing but not an entirely welcome surprise.  We are now layering up more at night and the ocean swims less frequent. I was no longer feeling so smug listening to stories of the cold Sydney winter.

We first touched the eastern inland point of Shark Bay at Hamelin Pool.  Hamelin Pool is an inlet populated with stomatolites, the most ancient of life forms formed by bacteria in very salty waters.  They look a lot like small rocks in a bay but are apparently geologically very exciting (so Chris tells us...).

Stromatolites gone wild!

We camped at a Bush Heritage property, Hamelin Station which was previously a sheep station now restored as a historical site and for land conservation.

Hamelin Pool was the first of many surprises of Shark Bay.  To be honest I really only knew of the dolphin feeding at Monkey Mia before we visited.  But as we ventured into the area the discovery of Shell Beach, a beach entirely made up of small white cockle shells and crystal clear water and the view of sharks, fish, stingrays and abundant sea life from Eagle Bluff and then the remote coastline of Francis Peron National Park which make it a special place.

Who gets the fish?

Our early morning visit to Monkey Mia for the dolphin feeding wasn't so much a disappointment but more managed than I expected.  After decades of feeding dolphins with buckets of fish each day it turns out us well meaning humans were doing more damage than good.  The dolphins were losing their hunting skills and the young dolphins were not surviving.

Are you sure thats a dolphin behind you?

A small crowd of 200 people turned up for the 7:45am talk and feed and Charlotte and Aurora were lucky to be chosen as one of the six to hand a fish to the two dolphins that came in for feeding.  It was  amazing to see dolphins cruising up and down the beach in reaching distance and in flat water but it was also all over pretty quickly.

We spent the rest of the day swimming, snorkelling, fishing and 4WDing the National Park which we shared with just a few other people and much much more wildlife.

Chasing fish in Shark Bay

The Pinnacles - nowhere near Shark Bay