WA Trip - Shark Bay and Monkey Mia

After the couple days of living it up on the luxury farm stay we got stuck at in Northampton, we were happy to get back on the road and head North.  We weren't so happy about the drive though - it was another 5 hours in an uncomfortable rental car with not much to look out the window at.  The sparse landscape slowly changed, and eventually we got to Hamelin Pool, our first stop towards Shark Bay.

 Hamelin Pool is a Marine Reserve containing the most diverse range of stromatolites in the world.  And after our visit a few days prior to the stromatolites at Lake Thetis we were becoming quite the experts on bacterial blobs!  

Pretty bacterial blobs in the pretty water


Not far down the road we stopped at Shell Beach, a beach that, quite surprisingly from the name, is covered in itty bitty shells.  You can't really tell from far away, but zoom in and the millions of little white cockle shells are remarkable.  The beach stretches for 60 km and is only one of two beaches in the world made entirely of shells.  The water was quite pretty here too, and after a long drive and the warm sun it was nice to dip our toes in.
Cockle shells

Practicing the Australian Wave.  Go away flies!

That was the last stop before we reached Denham, the town where we stayed for the next two nights. It was also the town where we kept having to stop the car to wait for emus to cross the road.  It's quite a sight, seeing such a giant bird crossing the road in the middle of town.  I think that was one of the trip highlights for my parents.
Why did the emu cross the road?
Caution: Emu Crossing!
Did you know it's pronounced E-Mew and not E-Mooo? 
And again...
In the morning we went to Shark Bay to watch the dolphin feeding.  Because of the Easter holidays there were a lot of people on the beach so the experience was not as pleasant as it might be on a quiet morning.  But the dolphins came in and had a feed and then swam off to do their dolphin things.  Next explored the Ocean Park Aquarium in Denham and got to learn about the sea creates of the area.  They had a few sharks in a larger tank and my favourite was a turtle who was recovering from an injury.  
The crowd for the dolphin feeding


Sharks at the aquarium
Turtle dude
I see you Mr. Weird Hat Man
In the afternoon we drove back to Shark Bay to take a catamaran out on the water.  It was a lovely couple of hours on the bay with so many dolphin sightings that we overheard the captain calling his friends to tell them about it.  We also got to see a few turtles and even a couple dugongs.  I had never heard of dugongs before the trip - they are essentially blobby relatives of manatees.  The catamaran was an absolute highlight of the trip - it was the kind of beautiful turquoise water that we itched to be out on and the animal life we saw was quite incredible.  Shark Bay was the furthest point North we explored on this trip, and after that it was time to start making our way back to Perth.
Mother and baby dolphin

Watching for dolphins on the catamaran


Dugong



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