Belmont-Kleingeld Family: Day 7

The only problem with staying down near Hamelin Pool is that it is quite a trek away from Denham and Monkey Mia. We made plans the previous night to get up early and head out to Monkey Mia first thing to see the dolphins. Of course, Murphy’s Law comes into play and the only day that I have managed to sleep past 6am was this day… Sure enough, we woke up late and ended up leaving about an hour later than we should have… only to arrive at the beach to get a glimpse of a couple of dolphins before they turned tail and headed back out to sea with full bellies… DOH!

All was not lost. We still managed to see a turtle bobbing around the jetty and enjoyed a coffee sitting on the foreshore of this gorgeous location.

Next, we debated about whether or not we had enough time to go exploring in the Francois Peron Nation Park (the northern most part of the Shark Bay area). We ended up deciding on a quick trip into the base of the park to the Peron Homestead Historical Site… and were pleased we did. The area was run as a sheep station over a period of time from the 1900s but because of the saltiness of the water and ground soil they were never really successful. However, they have left behind a homestead well worth visiting. First up there is a natural spa run off artesian water pumped up to the surface. Apparently the water sits about 40 degrees C… it was a bit warm on the feet to start with but we soon relaxed into it ;)

We then explored the old shearing shed and shearer’s quarters:

Dinner time:

Our decision to explore a bit further into the national park was made when we discovered a tyre pressure station at the start of the park… there was a special doovalacky (technical term because Dave is not here right now for me to ask) to release the pressure on the way in and then a compressor to pump up the tyre again as you leave…. Dave was pretty stoked about this…. Obviously a bloke thing…

Anyhow, we only dipped our feet into the national park by covering the 10km to the first spot called Big Lagoon. Unfortunately the lagoon was nothing special but for us, the trip was worthwhile when we spotted this guy on the track:

Neither Dave nor I had seen a Thorny Devil in the wild so we were a bit chuffed ;)

We left the national park and headed for Denham, stopping at a couple of lookouts along the coast… we found a "Thong Shack" at one spot:

Every now and then I manage to get a photo of all 3 smiling and looking at the camera at the same time...

A highlight of the day was a visit to the Ocean Aquarium. I can definitely recommend this place for anyone with kids… or super geeks like us ;) My new favourite marine animal is a Leopard Ray:

I thought Aiden was being super brave staring into the eyes of this sea snake… I had already taken 3 steps back away from the tank ;)

We were fast approaching the end of a loooong day but we still had one more place on our itinerary, Shell Beach. The beach here is made entirely of those cockle shells I mentioned earlier.

I finally made it into a photo: