West Coast Mission: Day 6

The Shark Bay area is about 130km up a peninsula that has loads of side roads where you can pull over and marvel at... well... pretty stuff. Loody had heard about Hamelin Pool, the first turn off after the highway so we dutifully drove down and checked it out.
It's the home of the stromatolites which are apparently responsible for a whole lot of the world's oxygen and if it wasn't for them then oxygen breathing lifeforms such as us wouldn't have evolved. Let's be honest, they aint much to look at but if you actually consider what they are then they're impressive and they're millions of years old. If you check them out when the tide is in apparently you can see the little bubbles of oxygen they produce.

Wow, I can't believe I managed to construct an entire paragraph about rocks. I'm proper getting into the Aussie spirit, just hand me a shrimp and a barbie to chuck it on and I'm away.

You have a choice of two areas to stay in here, Denham is a proper town with phone signal and supermarkets and it has a hostel and other places to stay. About 25km from there is the Monkey Mia Dolphin Resort which is where the dolphins come to visit for feeding time every morning so we decided to stay there for a couple of nights.

Monkey Mia

Monkey Mia is fucking cool, it's $6 each to get into the resort (pass is good for 2 nights) then you can choose to camp ($12 per person per night) or there's a backpackers or cabins. They also have a little shop on the resort, an awesome self catering kitchen, a restaurant and a bar, a pool and a spa plus the beach and the dolphin interaction centre. For the first time I really felt like I was on holiday, we didn't feel like we were roughing it here at all despite still camping, I mean, it's a resort for fucks sake.

A resort!!

I'd never stayed in a resort in my adult life before, I felt so posh, the urge to decant goon into a wine bottle was almost overwhelming.

Spin Me Right Round Baby

This was pretty much the first place we'd stopped where the sea had been warm enough to have a proper frolic so I cunningly hid the map that had the words "Beach Access; Please Note That Sharks Are Often Spotted In The Bay" so no one would freak out. Oh come on, sharks? In Shark Bay? Who'd have thunk it? After an afternoon on the beach reflecting on what a hard life we lead we headed to the bar before me and Becky decided to check out the spa. We were somewhat apprehensive about getting into water at this time of night when it was starting to cool down, remember, May is autumn going into winter in this part of the world. It only took one toe in the water to realise that this was where we'd be spending the evening so we fetched some towels, the others and copious amounts of goon and spent the ensuing hours singing, splashing and playing a game with an inflated goon bag that involved clinging onto it while the others spun you round.

Pissed And Rowdy

Hmm, copious amount of alcohol combined with spinning round in circles. Obviously we never thought this one through properly.

I'm not sure what time it was when we got thrown out of the spa nor do I remember going to bed. I must have pulled my trademark passing out trick because the next thing I knew it was morning and the neighbours were ranting about the inconsiderate, loud bastards that woke the camp up last night.

Wow, I must have been tired, they never woke me up ay.

written by

Koala Bear on May 7, 2007 from Monkey Mia, Australia

from the travel blog: Sod Off Great Big Mission Round Oz

tagged RoadTrip, LovinIt and WestCoast

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