Sharks
14th December 2005

Beach day… spent more or less the whole day at the beach. Good!

Tanja and Tom got a inside tip about a spot where reef sharks swam close to the beach, so we walked out there and stood with water up to our knees as sharks were swimming just a couple of meters away from us. Cool!

Images from Coral Bay can be found in the Gallery.

Blow holes
13th December 2005

Drove up from Denham through Carnarvon and headed out towards something called the Bibbawarra Bore where bore water at up to 65 degrees.
Afterwards we drove out to some blow holes by the coast where the ocean is blown up to 20 meters up in the year.

As you can see here, Tanja is posing in front of some of the large salt lakes we drove by:

Arrived in Coral Bay where we checked into the (only) backpacker accommodation and headed for the beach a couple of hours. Near the beach there is also a small lookout where you can get a overview of the bay.

On my way back to the hostel I stumbled upon Tom – a German guy, together with Birgitte, we had met in Monkey Mia. Had a good time with them the rest of the days we spent in Coral Bay.

Pearl Farm
12th December 2005

A 20 minute boat trip from the Monkey Mia Resort there is a floating pearl farm where tourists can go on a 1-hour trip. Tanja and I had however heard about the possibility of ‘working’ at the pearl farm for a whole day. So the previous day I had called up one of the guys working there and arranged it so that we would be picked up in the morning when they went out.

So it went, and we were picked up at the jetty in the morning and met up with Peter (the father), Robbie and Jamie (sons).
Out at the pearl farm we worked with checking if the mussels had rejected their pearls, died or were still okay. Pearls are made by inserting ‘a foreign object’ (in our case a small piece of shell) into mussels, which then starts adding pearl material around the shell.
Since most tourists who go out to the pearl farm to ‘work’ don’t have a working visa, this is of course a tour we have to pay a small amount for, and in return we received a black pearl!
We had planned on driving up to Coral Bay after finishing up at the pearl farm, but we were warned heavily by the pearl farm crew. After hearing stories about how easy it is to plunge through dozens of kangaroos in the darkness, we rather drove over to Denham where we stayed a night.

A few photos can be seen in the Gallery.

Dolphins
11th December 2005

Every morning, usually between 8 and 11, dolphins comes swimming up to the beach to get fed. A bunch of people meets up hoping to be the ones picked out to feed them - usually just kids of couse.

In the mid-day we took a 2-3 hour cruise with a sailing boat called Shotover to look at dolphins, dugongs, turtles, sharks and other sights.

The rest of the day was spent by the pool & hottub (bore water) inside the resort.

Monkey Mia
10th December 2005

Departed Kalbarri early to drive into the Kalbarri National Park another time to look at some beatiful lookouts, gorges, nature, (almost) dried out creeks and lots of flies.
Tanja did most of the driving… err… speeding up towards Monkey Mia, something the police also discovered. We got pulled over, and the policeman had Tanja doing a breathalyzer test and telling her how fast she was going. Luckily he also told her to use the 100 dollars she was supposed to get fined on tourist stuff instead :p
Went on, slowly, further up and stopped at a place called Hamelin Pool that has the world’s oldest living organisms - Stromatolites.

Since I had lost my camera and this guy had brought it up to Denham, we had to take a stop there. Had no way of knowing where he stayed, so just went into the first and only hostel I knew about there - and luckily he was there and I got my camera back
A short trip from Denham over to Monkey Mia, and we checked into a dorm at the Monkey Mia Resort.
Tanja was lucky and got a free evening cruise with the sailing boat Shotover (pretty girls get stuff for free!) while I enjoyed the beautiful sunset over Shark Bay.

Images can of course be found in the Gallery now that I had my camera back.