Kel & I woke up at 5:30 as usual, just before the alarm goes off.  Kel had a look outside and discovered that overnight the wind had changed and the various anchorages that were holding down the washing were now successfully holding the washing on the ground.  Not all of it, but enough.  So … there we are, in our dressing gowns at sunrise, rehanging the washing.  All my fault, naturally.

So … since we were awake, it was necessary to wake the kids. They were actually pretty happy about this, as I suggested that they open their window and check out the view.  It’s not everyday that you wake up to a sunrise over Shark Bay and they were chuffed to be able to view it from the comfort of their doonas.

Brekky was the interesting combination of buttered mushrooms and nutella.  Luckily they were on different plates .. but there ya go.  Hannah, the old soul, had porridge.  Breaky outta the way, we headed down the beach to see the dolphins get theirs too.

There were about 50 people lined up, eagerly awaiting the dolphins arrival, and they weren’t disappointed.  About 9 dolphins rocked up in different family groups.  Once the feeding started, about 3 dolphins are chosen to get about 3 fish each.  Naturally Hannah got chosen to feed a dolphin.  It was always going to be …

We went back to the van before the next feeding and grabbed a coffee.  The water here tastes weird and thus the coffee even weirder.  Wandering back for the 2nd feeding saw the coffee’s turfed, after some discussion.

Only about 20 people had hung around for the 2nd feeding but even more dolphins had ventured in for the free tucker.  This time Blake was the lucky one and got to feed one.  We were feeling a little blessed at this point.  The day was going really well … the sun was shining and there was plenty more to come.

We’d signed up for a 3 hour cruise around Shark Bay.  The first part of the cruise took us out to a pearl farming outfit a couple of kms away.  The bloke that gave the tour was fantastic.  Plenty of info and examples of how they do what they do in typical ocker fashion.  Very informative and entertaining.  Another couple on the tour commented that they’d done a similar tour elsewhere and that this one was light years better.  They also had a pearl shop on board, as expected, but the prices were very reasonable.  The kids got pearl necklaces for $10 each.

 

Next we went cruising looking for Dugongs.  It’s not really dugong season yet, but they had seen one yesterday and were confident of seeing one today too.  Kel spotted one first and it wasn’t long before it turned out to be a group of 5 or so that were grazing here.  Very rare for this time of year.

On the way back to shore the kids (since they were the only ones mad enough to ignore the temperature of the water) jumped in the boom net.  Plenty of fun.  Blake nearly lost his boardies a few times.

Back to the van for a quick lunch.  I wanted to have a poke around the national park.  No idea what was really there to see, mind you … just seemed like a good idea.  We set off with the plan to find a beach.  We turned off into the park and let down the tire pressures on the sand track.  They’ve actually got a compressor there to pump the tires back up again which is pretty impressive.  Prado in sand mode we set off down the track.  About 5km in there’s a sign that says 40kms to the right and 10kms to the left.  Kel chose the left path as she was already freaking out about driving on the sand.

Rough, narrow, sand track, 10 kms of it … just like this.

It was pretty narrow, rutted and soft in places, but the Prado handled it with ease.  Once we got to Big Lagoon at the end and had a look around it was quickly deemed too bloody windy to hang around so we headed back.  We had a look around a few salt lakes and also the Peron homestead on the way back to the main road.  Still in search of a beach, we ducked into another track.  This time we did find a beach, but it was full of rocks and seaweed.  We gave up on that idea altogether and headed back to camp.

Windmill at Peron Homestead

Pearl farm

Blake and Hannah set themselves up to watch the sunset and do their homework & diaries, while mum and dad checked emails and did the banking.  Dinner was Lamb Fajitas.  A pre packup was done after dinner too.  We don’t need to set off early tomorrow as there’s only about 350kms to go.  We also want to try our luck with the dolphins again.

Monkey Mia classroom at sunset

Free camping for the next two nights somewhere along the road (maybe Quobba)… and then at Coral Bay for 3 nights … and then free camping at Exmouth for 3 nights … at all of which I’ll be very surprised if I can get any Internet.  The SPOT tracker may at least show that we’re still alive though.

Worst case there will be a massive update to the blog at Tom Price on the 12th of August.