Shark Bay

We spent a week in Shark Bay discovering the area. The area is a major tourist attraction along the western Australian coast as there is so much to see and do in the area.

Shark Bay is essentially 2 peninsulas that jut out north-westerly from the mainland.

We stuck to the eastern most peninsula is this is where the main town and paved roads are and we didn’t have a boat to explore Dirk Hartog Island.

Shell Beach and Stromatolites

Our first stop was at the southerly part of the bay. This area is where the stromatolites are located. Stromatolites are the oldest life form on earth. They are essential microbial rock layers created by cynobacteria. (If you’re interested in learning more about them, you can click this link). Unfortunately, the boardwalk which allows you a close up look of the stromatolites was closed as it was damaged by Cyclone Seroja last April. But we took a walk on the shell beach to see them out in the water. (They are the black things in the water behind our son in this photo.)

At this southernly section of the beach, the water has a high concentration of salt (similar to the Dead Sea). This has allowed the Shark Bay cockle shell to dominate. The beaches in this area are made up of billions of tiny shells, not sand!

In some places along the bay, the shells are 10 metres (30 feet) deep!. When it rains, it washes a layer of the calcium off the top of the shells, then this gets baked in the sun and acts like a glue compacting the shells and holding the bottom layers together. In the 1800s, they cut shell bricks from quarries of shells and built structures (walls, buildings) out of the bricks.

The shells are also used around the whole Shark Bay area where sand or rocks would be used in other places – i.e. as gravel in the caravan park, as part of the gardens and walkways in Monkey Mia, etc.

Francois Peron National Park

This park makes up the northern end of the peninsula. It is only accessible to 4WD vehicles. The roads are soft sand and there is a station at the entrance of the park for vehicles to deflate / inflate their tires so that they can drive on the roads without (hopefully) getting stuck.

We were originally planning on spending 2 days exploring the park but due to first a diesel shortage in town and then the dolphins not cooperating with our plan, we ended up only spending one day. We went up to the tip (Cape Peron), then explored various places (Skipjack Point, Bottle Bay, and Gregories) on the way back down.

At Cape Peron (the tip) two ocean currents meet each other. You can just make it out in the top right of this photo where you see the white wave line.

Skipjack point was really beautiful. We saw manta rays and sharks in the water below and tons of birds resting on the shore.

Unfortunately, a couple of things made our trip around Francois Peron park not ideal: 1. the temperature was over 40C (100+), 2. the flies were abundant and driving us absolutely crazy! and 3. the driving was rough and bumpy (more on that later…)

The flies were the worst at Cape Perron and Skipjack point. Once we drove a bit further south to Gregories where we had lunch, there were still a ton of flies, but not quite as bad.

The road around Francois Perron park was mostly very deep, hot, soft sand, but there were spots where it was hard claypan. The hot, soft sand was very slippery to drive on and yet at the same time it was very bumpy. It was hard to keep our food in our stomachs! You can watch a short video I took below.

There was quite a bit of traffic on the roads, but we only saw two cars that got bogged. Luckily, we had our Maxtrax with us so we could help them get out.

Our car often records temperatures higher than reality, but during our drive in Francois Peron park, we set a new record! 75C (167F)!

Not sure why it was recording so high – it was around 40C outside but maybe the hot sand was throwing off the sensor?

Denham Town

We stayed in the town of Denham (the only town). It was very pretty with a beach and promenade along the water and a great playground. There was also an excellent visitors centre that showed a 3D movie on the sinking of the HMAS Sydney naval boat by a German undercover warship called the Kormoran during WWII. (If you’re interested, you can read more about it here). The HMAS Sydney was sunk off the coast of Shark Bay and the town of Denham has a memorial in honour of the people who died.

The playground is also designed as a shipwreck and a lighthouse in reflection of the town’s history and the great number of shipwrecks off the coast here.

One of the photos that I’ve been meaning to take for ages is of the Emu crossing signs that we’ve seen along the coast from Exmouth to here. And indeed, there are a lot of emus crossing the roads!

The town of Denham is quite small, but has all the required shops and beautiful sunsets.

Monkey Mia

The Monkey Mia (pronounced My-ya) dolphin experience is one of the main attractions in Shark Bay. Our original idea was to pay for a monthly pass (you can only buy either daily or monthly), go and see the dolphins on Monday, then Francois Peron on Tuesday, then the dolphins 2 more times over the week and another day at the National Park. However, on Monday, there was a diesel shortage and we didn’t have enough to make it to Monkey Mia and back. On Tuesday we went to the national park. Then, the dolphins didn’t cooperate – they didn’t show on Wed, Thurs, Friday or Saturday. This means we wasted these days waiting around for dolphins. While we were waiting, the park had a policy that if a kid picked up 3 pieces of trash from the beach, they could get an activity book and more info on the dolphins. Well since we had nothing else to do but wait, the kids did a lot of beach cleaning – they ended up with 2 different activity books, a detailed book on the dolphins of Monkey Mia, stickers and some other stuff – the park actually told the kids that they had run out of gifts to give them!

We were leaving Denham on Sunday but decided to give it one more try. According to their dolphin experience board, the dolphins usually show up between 8-8:15am. At 8:30, there were still no dolphins so we decided to leave as we had to get back to Denham and pack up the van so we could check out before the 10am deadline. Our daughter decided to use the toilet before we left and while she was in there, they made an announcement that dolphins were coming in!! Thank god she had to use the loo!

We ended up seeing 3 dolphins – Piccolo, her daughter Pan, and another juvenile named Jindy.

The dolphin experience is managed by the parks and wildlife service and therefore focused on conservation and sustainability. There are several rules about how to interact with the dolphins and which dolphins they feed (only certain females). They feed them only a very small percentage of their daily total requirements to ensure that the dolphins continue to learn to hunt and feed their young. The dolphins at Monkey Mia also are all from one family line – a female named Puck.

Eagle Bluff

14 years ago, one of our favourite campsites in all of Australia was Eagle Bluff in Shark Bay. You are only allowed to stay there for 24 hours and must obtain a camping permit from the visitors centre. We decided to head back and see if we still liked it. At the top of the bluff, there is a walkway where you can look down at various sharks, rays, etc. swimming in the water.

It’s been very windy along the coast since Exmouth, but the day we visited Eagle Bluff it was particularly windy. Check out this video:

The camping area is further away from the bluff and therefore somewhat protected from the wind. We still loved the campsite and the view that it offered us.

Up next… Kalbarri.