We arrived in Monkey Mia early evening, after stopping off to see the stromalites at Hamelin Pool, Shell Beach and Denham. We were staying in a campsite right on the beach, which is regularly frequented by dolphins. There is an interaction zone on the beach, here the dolphins are fed every morning, if they choose to come in, but you are not allowed to swim in it with them.

After checking there were no late visitors on the beach, we took full advantage of the facilities,which included a hot tub and pool! We had only planned to stay one night, but there was so much to do we extended it for one more.

On my way back from the shop the next morning, I saw a group of people on the beach, and going closer saw about 9 dolphins really close to the beach in the shallow water. It was great to be able to see them so close up, and some had brought their calves in as well - great to watch playing with the others or sticking close to mum! A ranger was also giving a really interesting commentary on each of the dolphins. It was then time for the first feed so I decided to stay and watch, despite having hands full from the shops. For some reason I was picked to be the first to feed the dolphins - a bit of a shock! So I threw down the breakfast on the beach and waded out to hand feed the nearest one - very cool! Luckily by that time Andrew had got out of bed and come to find me with the camera!

Later that afternoon we sailed out into the bay on a catamaran, and spotted dolphins, a sea snake, a tiger shark and the rare dugongs. Very nice to be out sailing and in such a beautiful place, full of marine life! Since there was an offer on which gave you really cheap sunset cruises if you had done the wildlife one, we also spent the evening on the boat - the wind had picked up so it was pretty exciting and we got absolutely soaked! The hot tub was very welcome when we got back!

The following day was similar, watching the dolphin feeds, chilling on the beach, and in the evening we did an Awestronomy course - basically star gazing with binoculars, but all the different constellations, galaxies and planets were pointed out to us - the skies here are amazing at night so it was nice to find out a bit more about what we were looking at!