Day 19

Monkey Mia - Denham - Whalebone Bay (Shark Bay)

" I was the hunter and I was the prey...."

Back to the beach at 7.30 this morning for another round of dolphin watching. We can't get enough of watching these beautiful creatures - just mesmerising! I got picked to feed Piccolo on the second feeding this morning. She likes to play with her food and so took delight in toying with the fish I placed in her mouth.

We then moved the van out of the resort and into the visitor carpark and went back to the beach to pick up our catamaran cruise aboard Aristocrat 2. We would spend from 10.30am till 1 pm cruising the bay in search of all the sea life that was on offer.

"Viagra"

No it wasn't on offer (although many asked!) Joining us on our cruise was The Old Fella from AGT. He'd been flown up to headline the Denham Fishing Festival ( I wrote about earlier) and was spending the day sightseeing with his wife before flying back to Adelaide. He'd gone out to the salt mines at Useless Loop (on the opposite side of our campsite tonight at Whalebone) to perform the night before. He is a great bloke and we had a good chat. Yes Teags I got a photo with him - just for you!!

We boom netted out from the jetty most of the way across to the Pearl Farm in the middle of the bay. They culture black pearls in the bay - it's a slow process taking up to 7 years (and 2 pearls) to get a beautifully rounded black pearl. Plus they import Japanese specialists to seed the pearl too - Hollywood dollars if you have a steady hand, fast and don't mind getting covered in oysters!

From there it was back aboard to go searching for sea creatures. We first spotted a 3m long Tiger Shark cruising the bay and pretty much at the same time, 3 dolphins were heading in the same direction as the shark. We thought we were about to witness a rather vicious attack - especially as the dolphins ran straight over the shark and then circled back to have another crack - obviously not scared one little bit! I thought there'd be dolphin bits flying everywhere! Was not to be and they all went about their business.

We also saw 2 dugongs busily chomping through the 75kg - yes kg of sea grass they eat daily! They are nowhere near as inquisitive or friendly as dolphins are but they were interesting to see nonetheless.

There were dolphins everywhere too - if they weren't bow riding our wake happily, they were hearding fish and feeding jumping in and out of the water all around us. There was so much action on the bay, the skipper extended the cruise for almost an hour extra!

Back at the resort we farewelled The Old Fella and another family from Sydney who's kids had got on very well with ours and we drove back through Denham to the little bay (Whalebone) we'd stayed at recently. It's a bit breezy tonight in the bay and we didn't get as good a sunset as we got on Saturday night here but it's still a great place to pull up - and it's free!

Tomorrow we are heading for Canarvon and will stop for a swim and a look at Shell Beach - no sand just shells line the whole beach section.