Life's a Beach!!!

Sorry about the cliché, but as I sit outside the campervan (who we have named Molly – don’t know why), I look out over white sand and blue-green water. So that’s a pretty accurate summary of the last week and a half! Kind of feel like we’re permanent stars in an advert for retirement planning…

Life's a beach!

A sunset

While at Exmouth, from whence I last posted, we spent a day at Bundegi Beach, where we saw a turtle swimming not three metres from shore, then another at Turquoise Bay, which is everything the name suggests – completely lovely. Thought we’d go to the pub over the road at 9 pm Friday night. As we reached the front door, they were locking up for the night! Hey ho.

Stromatolites - where life began

the view from the camper this morning

Went from Exmouth to Coral Bay, where we stayed for four nights – ‘Pay 3, Stay 4’ – well, you can’t refuse such offers when you’re a pensioner, can you?! Coral Bay is also quite beautiful. You can walk out to Ningaloo Reef from the shore and see amazing coral and lots of pretty fishes. Needless to say I perfected my snorkeling technique there. Saw a few stingrays in the crystal clear shallows too.

On Monday we walked to the north end of the bay which is a nursery for Reef Sharks. Saw abut 30-40 swimming only 4-5 metres from shore – knee deep!

Set off on Wednesday for Carnarvon and stopped at a place called Blowholes, which is where the incoming tide is pushed through the holes in the rock and spouts up 20 metres like geysers. Quite exciting.

At Carnarvon we found and walked on the 1-mile jetty which was built in 1898 and has the modest distinction of being the longest jetty in this part of Western Australia. Hmmm.

From Carnarvon, we went on to Shark Bay. This is where we saw the oldest living organisms on earth. Without them, we wouldn’t exist. 3.5 billion years ago, these single cell organisms started forming microbial mats and 2.5 bn years ago, the Stromatolites began to separate and send oxygen into the earth’s atmosphere, enabling the development of life on earth. Quite humbling really, seeing these lumps of grey ‘rock’ which actually formed the earth’s crust and are directly responsible for our existence.

The Hamelin Pool Caravan Park in Shark Bay is a strange little place with some fascinating history as a telegraph relay station between Carnarvon and Denham (where I’m writing this).

There’s also a shell quarry where blocks of solid shell – tiny fragum cockles – were cut to use as building material. The beach consists entirely of these compacted shells. We are eating at Pearlers restaurant tonight (our weekly treat), which is built entirely from shell blocks!

Life's another beach! Gillie particularly likes this one as it looks like we're in the Sahara or somewhere - in fact it's Shell Beach

There’s also a tiny museum at Hamelin Pool that we paid $2.50 each for the ‘walk through’ and were enlightened by our very own Aussie throwback – Ian – a delightful down-to-earth old cobber with few teeth. I liked him immediately as he called me ‘young fella’! He delighted in telling us it was snake season and to ‘use your eyes – they’re your best friend where snakes are concerned’. Not much help really.

Altogether, Shark Bay was a charming and slightly surreal place to stay, if a bit ramshackle.

On Friday we set off for Denham, where we are staying for two nights before setting off again for Monkey Mia to watch dolphins and dugongs.

Saturday (today) we found a place called Little Lagoon – yet another idyllic spot, only marred by the fact that there were probably Stone Fish in the shallows and it’s shallow for a long way out. Typical Australia – Beauty and the Beast combined.

There are five dominant colours in the Australian landscape: red, for the earth; white for the beaches; blue for the sea and sky (notice any theme here? They’re a patriotic lot these Aussies); black/grey for the bush fire-scarred vegetation and a kind of muted, apologetic green for the shrubs and bushes trying to regenerate after devastation. Fascinating. Next blog probably coming from Perth, where we are staying at Derick’s, the chap who invited us to his home on the basis of a five-minute chat in the pool at Jabiru – remember him?

at the start of 1 Mile Jetty