2006/08 Australia trip - Monkey Mia |
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Sunday July 30th
We blasted our way back up the hill, through the sand ruts, and out of Big Lagoon. With all the day visitors, it had turned into a 
knee-deep sand trap. We stopped at the Peron Homestead, which is now a museum of the days of sheep farming. It’s also a base for the effort to save endangered species by keeping dogs and cats out of the peninsulas and islands. As well as bilbies, the plan is to introduce woylies and chuditches, names of other marsupials that we hadn’t heard before.
The homestead had running hot water, from the bore that used to supply the sheep station. There were some emus enjoying the overflow from the hot tub. Note the way they fold their legs to get down and drink. The hot tub’s water looked somewhat icky to us. We didn’t need a bath that badly!
The town of Denham looked deader than Bognor in January. There weren’t even any Old Age Pensioners huddled under the shelters. It was Sunday and nearly everything was closed - odd for a resort town. We were there to use the Laundromat, one of the few places that were open. As the restaurants were closed I served up toasted cheese sandwiches for Sandie’s birthday lunch.
There is no fresh water anywhere on the peninsula so the town has a desalination plant which filters sea water. We filled our water tanks and containers from a metered pump. I think it cost us 40c, much cheaper than buying water from a store.
We left Denham, heading over to camp at Monkey Mia on Shark Bay. There are no monkeys there and nobody remembers where the name came from. Today it is famous as the place where the dolphins come in each morning to be fed by the humans.
The Monkey Mia Reserve has only one campground, inside a resort, inside a nature reserve and we had to pay for entry to the reserve in order to find out if there was any room at the resort. “If you can find a space then you’re in”. We took one of the last two vacant spots. We were camping nose-in at the side of the road, inches from the next camper, with traffic passing our back doors, very different from our peaceful campsite at the Big Lagoon!
As compensation though, we were only a short walk from the beach and the dolphins were already there. They weren’t being 
fed, but just passing through in the shallows, checking out the humans, and probably watching the sunset, just like us.
The evening was noisy with a live band performing in the very crowded bar. We retreated to use the Internet. By this time I’d glued my glasses back together, but the keyboard was so worn that the letters had disappeared so my e-mails were probably a bit cryptic this time too. The connection was extremely slow. There must be a very thin wire between Monkey Mia and the rest of the world. Sandie finally got her birthday dinner, a barramundi (fish), at the resort’s restaurant.