Today was Monkey Mia day! – Or, at least, it was the drive to the peninsula that Monkey Mia is on. 13 or so years go, when I had been travelling with my windsurfing friend, we had gone as far as Geraldton. I was desperate to get to Monkey Mia, to see the clear waters, and also the dolphins that swim there. He wouldn’t take me. So, intrepid as I am, I booked a seat on a Greyhound coach, which goes as far as the turnoff at the ‘Overlander Roadhouse’, then another bus to the turnoff for the stromatolites and historic Telegraph station, then I walked with the flies to the telegraph Station, saw the strolomotites, then got a lift to Monkey Mia, had an afternoon there, then got the bus back to the roadhouse, got onto the greyhound bus again and arrived back at Geraldton about 22 hours after I left. Phew. Anyway, it was the walk to the telegraph Station I most remembered, because it was early morning, hot, and a LOT of flies. I had always wondered how far it was I walked…
5.2 Kms or 3.25 miles. No wonder I thought it a long walk! I drove there this time, and set the odometer to see how far it was. We got lost on the first attempt, as I took a turn too early, and we arrived at a homestead in a matter of moments in the car. Darren laughed cos he thought that my ‘long walk’ which I had described all these years, had really been only about a kilometre. I was pretty cross, but glad when I realised we had gone the wrong way, and weren’t anywhere near the telegraph station.
It was pretty hot when we eventually arrived, and trouped off to look at the stromatolites in the highly saline bay. These are the oldest life form on earth, being “almost identical to organisms that existed 1900 million years ago”. Somehow that makes the year 2000 not seem such a big deal! They look like piles of mushrooming rocks in the water, and we walked on the boardwalk over them. You could see wheel rut marks where carts in the late 19th Century ran over them to get to waiting boats further out to see.
While we were making our lunch at the telegraph station, another traveller (pretty, blonde, accent) approached Darren and asked if we had any petrol to spare. The dozy couple of females had not got petrol at the roadhouse, and wanted to get enough petrol to take them to Denham, the only town on the peninsula, but which is 100 Kms away. We were going to give it to them, as we had some for our generator, but then I told them to go back 30 kms or so to the roadhouse and buy some. We gave them enough to get them there. Foreigners hey?
After that it was on the road for us too. Fiona, Darren’s sister and tour guide of these parts, had drawn a map where we could stay on the famous Shell Beach. We dutifully followed her directions, down a faint track, don’t go up the hill, follow the dunes around and… soon found ourselves driving on Shell Beach, with totally no one around, only a few cars around the bay in the far distance. I wandered down to the water’s edge, only to turn around to see Darren dancing about with nothing on… Seclusion can do this to you. One minute normal, the next butt naked… Fortunately for all I will not inflict a piccie.
We decided it was too windy to stay where we were, and the water was so shallow, it would take quite a walk just to get to a depth where we could swim, so we decided to go for one of the official free camp spots further down the road.
We reached a place called Fowler’s Camp, which was also down a dirt road and was right by another beach, also very shallow, but with some shelter from a hill behind us. It was beautiful and we went for a swim immediately. The bay was about 1 km across, the depth of which did not seem to come much higher than my thighs, but it was clear and deep enough to be swimmable. The dirt road veered off to the right along the bay, so we thought we should follow it, just in case there was a better spot further down the road. We bumped along, sometimes coming tantalisingly close to the beach then suddenly turning and running inland. We were just beginning to think we were going to have to turn around and go back when we hit the main road again! Feeling pretty foolish we turned right and went back to our original entry point. Clearly the only place to camp was where we had swum.
After we had put up the caravan, we turned left towards the opening of the bay, to which we were very close. Darren snorkelled while I floated about in the very warm saline water, feeling like I was in a massive kiddie’s pool. Truly bliss.
That evening Darren went for an explore while I took some pictures as the sun went down. There was not a cloud in the sky, and as the sun disappeared it gave the sky an amazing glow of orange to red to blue to purple
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete