Day 2: We got to meet the pet kangaroos, who have been
rescued as babies when their mothers were hit by cars on the highway. Two of
the three were very friendly and happily came over to sniff us and be stroked.
The third wasn’t that interested in us, and preferred to lounge in the shade.
There were also sheep, guinea pigs, chickens and a cat – who knows what other
animals there were out of sight!
We did a short riverside walk before our long drive, but the
walk was much less pleasant than the scenery warranted because of swarms of
persistent – though harmless – flies. On the plus side, it made us thankful to
jump into the car.
The first stop, after three hours, was at Billabong Station –
I kid you not – which is a ‘homestead’, meaning a one-family settlement in the
middle of the wilderness. We picked up ice creams and continued on the road to
Hamelin Pool, our first taste of the Shark Bay region and UNESCO heritage site.
Hamelin Pool is famous for being the best living example of stromatolites.
Stromatolites, for those of you who aren’t evolutionary biologists, are groups
of cyanobacteria that are similar to those found in 3,500 million year old
rocks. They are the earliest record of life on earth, and are what created
enough oxygen for other forms of life to emerge. Up close, they look a bit like
bubbly rocks, and they do solidify into rocks if they are compacted.
Hamelin
Bay, where they are found, was one of our first glimpses of the incredible
green-blue ocean of the Western Australian north. There are lots of markers of
human history as well as the more distant ecological past, with remains of the
various economic enterprises that have been attempted in the regions, some more
successful than others. Wool stations, sandalwood, pearls, and lots of fishing
are what we’ve seen so far.
We weren’t allowed to swim at Hamelin Bay, so we stopped at
Nanga Beach, which is on the west coast of the Peron Peninsula that juts up
into Shark Bay. We had the beach all to ourselves for most of our visit, a very
long stretch of sandy beach with millions of tiny shells crunching underfoot
and a long, shallow entry into the water. The boys are really into the Waboba
ball now, so they were entertained in the shallow water making it skim and skip
along the surface. It was a bit too windy for me, with my gradually worsening
cold, so I spent little time in the water and then did some yoga stretching in
a patch of sheltered beach.
The last stop before our final destination of Denham town,
was Eagle Bluff. This is a lookout spot above a bay renowned for exciting
marine life, such as lemon sharks and nervous sharks. We spotted something in
the water, smallish but potentially sharkish too, so we scrambled down the
bluff to get a closer look.
Of course it was gone by the time we got down, and
we realized that the view into the clear water was better from up high than
close up. We had to scramble back up the sandy slope (that's me in the picture, with windblown hair), and suddenly the kids
were desperate to get to the house to watch X-Factor.
Denham is a quaint little oceanside town, a bit buffeted by
the strong westerly winds. The boats hang out offshore because the water is
shallow for quite a ways into the harbour.
Our rental place is up on a hill so
we get a nice view of ocean and also lots of breeze. The owners live upstairs,
but we have a huge space on the main floor with a big ‘rumpus room’ (1970s,
anyone?) with a dart board, a large yard, patio with BBQ, and lots of sleeping
space to keep the boys happy (i.e. separate beds!).
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