Holiday day 5 Denham to Monkey Mia

Today we headed across the peninsula to Monkey Mia, famous for the dolphins and dugongs that gather there for the plentiful seagrass beds. Our first activity was a boat cruise in the Aristocat II, one of two catamarans that take people out to watch the marine life in the bay. They did not disappoint; they knew where to go to spot the animals, by habit but also by communicating with other boats and their boss up above doing air tours. The dolphins were happy to play near the boat, and several of them even seemed to be playing with the boat. 

The dugongs were more elusive; they spend about 12-15 minutes under water and only come up for one to three breaths quite briefly in between. But once you have found one, you can usually keep it in sight and catch it coming up for air a few times, by which point you feel as though you have got a good look because it shows its nose and then dives down and shows the rest of its body as it slides back into the water. 

The tour also took us to a pearl farm where we learned just how delicate is the process of growing pearls – it takes at least seven years to grow a good sized one, and requires several human interventions. Rio got to eat some pearl meat and found it quite tasty, so he is hoping to get another taste of oysters before we leave the coast. Sol was tempted but they didn’t have a lot on offer so he didn’t get to try this time.

The final excitement of the boat trip was the 'natural jacuzzi' effect; they let down a net at the back of the boat and people hang on for dear life. I was still nursing my cold so I didn't jump in for the experience, but Chris and the boys enjoyed some body splashing fun.

Back on land, we finally got to enjoy the warm ocean waters without a cool ocean breeze interfering. Monkey Mia’s beach is the glorious tropical kind we were hoping for in the north west; sandy, warm, clear green-blue waters, and the bonus of lots of marine animals around. There are pelicans that hang around the beach quite unconcerned by the tourists; we saw a couple of turtles, and the dolphins like to come around just frequently enough to be exciting but not impossible to spot. I finally felt well enough to join in the water play, and started to learn why the boys are addicted to the Waboba ball – it really is quite fun to play for long stretches at a time. So much so that my arm is quite sore today from the Waboba session yesterday. 

Holiday day 4: Denham

Our morning trip was to the Francois Peron national park, which covers the central and northern half of the Peron Peninsula that juts up into Shark Bay. With a two-wheel drive, you can get to the homestead heritage site, which has an interpretive trail around the old sheep station as well as a natural habitat reclamation exhibit. 

The trail ends at the artesian hot tub, which was a wonderful soak for travellers’ bones, if a bit algal and murky at the bottom. It was a hot day; the mercury is slowly rising each day this week so it was about 26 degrees today. Out of the wind, that felt very hot and we moved slowly as lizards as we wandered around. Speaking of lizards, we finally got to see some up close and not dangerously crossing a highway in front of us. That was pretty exciting. 

We also saw a family of emus, with three very cute emu babies, who had come to the watering hole to freshen up. A clever blind had been set up so we could get quite close without disturbing them with our human presence. (See Sol's photos on facebook for pix of the emus).

After lunch, Chris and the boys played ball in the shallow water of Denham beach, while I wandered the town’s main strip to choose a restaurant for supper. I got to do some yoga in the back yard, with the wind rushing through the palm trees almost drowning out my internet yoga class – felt really good to be doing it outdoors, though. For supper, we went to the Old Pearler restaurant, housed inside a little building made of thousands of tiny shells compacted and cut into bricks. The speciality is local seafood, of course. Rio and I had the Red Emperor catch of the day, grilled with lemon pepper. He said it was one of the best meals he had ever had. Sol isn’t as keen on fish so he had chicken. Chris had a very tasty vegetable satay with rice, and didn’t miss eating fish at all. The meal was a nice size, but we all had room for dessert as well: Rio got the tiramisu, Chris had a mango-marsala cheesecake, I had honeycomb cheesecake and Sol had lime swirl cheesecake. There was lots of cross-table tasting – they were extremely yum. We managed to walk back up the hill to our place with our full tummies, and then enjoyed some time gazing at the southern night sky. It was very impressive to be able to see the centre of the Milky Way for the first time, and a big disc of the galaxy all the way across the sky, obscured in parts by dust but still thick and intense. I can see why they called it milky. 

Day 3 - Shark Bay and Little Lagoon

Holiday Day 3: In the morning we went to the Shark Bay visitors’ centre, where photos, videos and text explain why the region is a UNESCO heritage site. I was trying not to focus on the reptilian species on view, and absorb all the interesting scientific facts. 

After lunch, we went out looking for those species at the Little Lagoon. We were warned about the spiky rockfish when we went in, so we were a bit nervous, especially as the boys were playing with the ball again and jumping around. The lagoon water is beautiful, the surrounding soft sandy dunes shifting between white and red sand, the clear blue sky with a few tickling clouds. 

The mangroves in the estuary and the shallow waters of the lagoon attract a myriad of shore and water birds, fishing and feeding on the little marine creatures. We wandered along the estuary until we found a slightly deeper spot to try out our snorkels. At first, we weren’t sure we’d be seeing anything because the marine creatures were pretty small and the bottom of the estuary was a bit murky. But suddenly we were in the midst of schools of little fishies, seemingly not shy but happily scooting in and out of our snorkels. 

Pretty but not flashy fish, with some excitement thrown in by a couple of spiky crabs swimming at us. We found another spot further on that also had tiny shrimp – they seemed to be particularly attracted to my feet so I decided to watch from the bank rather than let them nibble whatever it was they wanted on me.   

After supper Chris and Sol discovered that they like passionfruit (I was already a fan), which had been given to us by our B&B host in Greenough.  Rio gave it the thumbs down -- too many seeds.

Shark Bay World Heritage Site

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!).

Sand surfing and cheering the Dockers

Day one of the holiday: We left Perth at 9:20 and drove up the coastal road, first stop at Lancelin at 11:00. We rented boards from a gas station and headed over to the dunes to try ‘sandboarding’, which is like snowboarding but on sand. It’s tougher than snowboarding, because your feet aren’t strapped in and you have to walk back up once you have gone down the dune. 

You can control your speed to a certain extent by choosing to wax the board for speed or let it get sandy to slow down. But you can’t do a lot of other control! Our main challenge was making sure the board didn’t go over rocks, because we had been warned of losing our $50 deposit on the boards. Sol and Chris took to it quite quickly; Rio and I were a little more cautious, but we all had fun in the end. 

I liked it best as a toboggan, sitting down and sliding in the sand. I used my feet for control – the only down side of that being that I would send sand flying up my shorts. Having covered ourselves in sunscreen in advance, we all walked out of the dunes with a layer of sand stuck onto us.

After that, we went to the Endeavour Tavern to watch Perth’s local footy team, Fremantle Dockers, playing in the Grand Final against the Tasmanian team, Hawthorn Hawkes. The tavern was enormous and absolutely heaving with people, but it had a nice outdoor space and was able to cope with the large crowd reasonably well. 

The game was exciting, but the Dockers went behind from the beginning and spent the entire game trying to catch up. Each time we scored, the Hawkes came back. It was pretty close compared with some of the matches we’ve seen in the lead up to the final, but it wasn’t quite the Dockers’ magic moment everyone on the west coast had been hoping for. It was the Dockers’ first time making it to the grand final, and Perth has been decked out in purple and white with anchors for the last couple of weeks in the build up. The kids played footy on the beach with their Dockers’ ball in between the quarters, but were very disappointed with the end result.

Sol said it was even more exciting than watching the Canucks playing!

After lunch, another long drive, with a brief stop in Dongara for groceries and a leg stretch. The scenery has gone through several transitions, from Perth’s forested slopes to a more windswept, scrubby dune landscape, to green pastures and farmland near Geraldton where we are spending the night. We are staying in a very comfortable little cottage on a farm south of Geraldton; wishing we could stay longer, actually, given how charming it is.

(That's a picture of the main house, not the cottage we stayed in next door). And apparently there are pet kangaroos here, though we arrived fairly late so didn’t have a chance to meet them. The geese have left their signs around, and the mozzies chased the boys inside, but the excitement of the evening was spotting a little lizard on the wall. (Chris didn’t mention the spider he found when pulling out the sofa bed). We played a cutthroat game of Magic after supper, and I won for the first time in a multi-player situation, which was quite momentous for me. 

Sheep farming in the country

This weekend we got the opportunity to experience an Australian sheep farm. Granted, with 300 sheep it is considered a 'hobby farm' rather than a commercial farm. My colleague Ray Marchetti is an auditor by day and a farmer on the weekends, getting back to his Italian farming roots. We had to venture farther out of Perth than we have been so far, a good 2 hour drive at our speed (Ray expected an hour - shows you how Australians drive. The speed limits here are much higher than in Canada. We were on a two lane country road and the speed limit was 110 km - compare that with the Pat Bay Highway from Victoria to Sidney, a four lane divided highway, where the speed limit occasionally reaches 90 km).

Ray has 300 acres, with rolling hills, a creek, sheep paddocks, a big tractor and multiple small farm vehicles. The youngest of his five children, Noah, was at the farm with his cousin James on Sunday when we visited. Noah had the job of identifying which sheep needed their bottom wool shearing to clean them up before being sent to market, while James was in charge of rustling up the sheep Noah identified. It was a pretty physical job, as the sheep aren't particularly keen and they charge around in big herds whenever a person comes near them. Ray had the battery-powered clipping shears and was in charge of that end of the job, flipping over the sheep with the most matted wool to get right along the underbelly.

We had the opportunity to discover just how physical it is to handle sheep, as each of us was handed a baby lamb to cuddle when we arrived. As you can see, I'm struggling a little to hang on. Poor Sol got a good hoof in the chest as well.

Ray gave us a tour of his 300 acres in a big four wheel drive truck, which nonetheless managed to get stuck in the mud near the creek. Luckily, he was able to pull it out with the tractor. Meanwhile, we did some exploring and the kids found themselves walking through some spiky grass - it makes sense now why grass grows in 'blades'!

The highlight of the trip for the kids, though, was undoubtedly the opportunity to drive the ATV and motorbike, which they each got to try. Apart from Rio not being quite sure how to brake, they took to wheels and motors surprisingly well. For Sol, his dirt biking experience at Western Speedway had prepared him, but it was Rio's first driving apart from go karts.

But for me, the highlight was the sweet little lambs, baaing away in the fields. Even with their scraggly bottoms, they're pretty cute.

Maritime Day and beyond

This Saturday we went back to Fremantle for our tourist activity of the weekend, as we hadn't properly explored the town or its museums. We started off with some squash at the Hilton club, the boys against each other (Rooney vs Rooney) and me against Cara Allan, a woman I was matched up with by the club owner.

We all had a good run, while Chris did the grocery shopping, and then we went to try out "Fremantle's best Indian restaurant", called Maya. Since it's the only Indian restaurant we have tried, in Fremantle or Perth, we couldn't scientifically test the guidebook's review, but it was certainly very good. Rio tried the lamb rogan josh, which was a little bit spicy for his taste but he enjoyed the meatiness of it. Sol had butter chicken, despite noticing that it had "little cream" listed as an ingredient, and also enjoyed that. Chris and I shared a palak paneer dish which was bright green and very tasty, as well as an eggplant/capsicum curry.

We wandered a bit in the trendy shopping district of Fremantle, and the boys had a good browse in a souvenir shop while I found a great bulk health food store and stocked up on some of the weird and wonderful ingredients that I have been missing.

After that we headed over to the docks and discovered that we had timed our visit magnificently to coincide with Maritime Day. There was a lot going on in various parts of the docks, but we wanted to visit the Maritime Museum so that was our focus for the afternoon. We explored the boat displays from down the ages, hanging at all levels in the sailboat-shaped museum. Then we did a special tour of the submarine - it's claustrophobic enough that they only take 10 people in at a time, and the tour is very in-depth and informative, taking a full hour to get in and around it.

My level of maturity was revealed when I discovered that my favourite part of the tour was learning the Stop Snorting Routine - though I have to say that it is surprisingly difficult to stop snorting when you are instructed to do so.

Sunday was Father's Day, which gave us a chance to make up to Chris the underwhelming father's day he had back in June when we were in Skagit. Although we did start the day in a similar way, with the morning spent watching two soccer matches. We had Rio's penultimate soccer match and Sol's final match. Rio played at home and Sol was away at Gosnells. Rio had to take his turn in goal for the first half of the match, and was kept quite busy with shots because the other team liked to leave one or two people lurking near goal while our defenders liked to play up in the attacking zone. He also used his hands outside the crease (it's a very small crease area) so he had to defend against a blistering free kick from very close range. His reactions were sharp, though, so they ended the half 0-0. In the second half, the other team got 3 cheap goals from poor goal kicks by the inexperienced goalie, but Rio had some satisfaction of scoring from a centrekick with a surprising run down the middle, a shot that hit the post and then a goal on the follow up.

Unfortunately for Sol, Rio's game made him late for his own match warm up, and by the time he turned up, they had a full roster of 15 players (they are not allowed to field more than 14 for any match and they aren't organised enough to figure it out in advance). So, he had to just watch and cheer for his final game of the season. Disappointing, but good that he had enough team spirit to stay under those circumstances. Now that his practices are done, he has decided to keep his skills and fitness up by getting up early to go for runs, and by training on his own in the yard or at the park nearby.

My father's day treat to Chris was to take him for 9 holes of golf at our nearby Wembley golf course, while the boys went to their first CISV Perth event. The CISV event was pretty small and mellow, but it was good for Rio to get the opportunity to try it out - and because it meant that Chris and I could go golfing on our own. Not that we wouldn't have wanted to have the kids golf with us, but the course had a lot of very long holes and it would have taken us a lot longer with all four of us - as it was, we were quite slow and let the people behind us jump in front after a few holes of feeling embarrassed by our slow progress. The course was really nice, with wide fairways divided by forests full of all of the cool Ozzie birds, including some noisy kookaburras. There isn't much undergrowth, so we managed to do the whole course without losing any balls, and in fact we gained two when hunting for our own balls in the forest. I think this means that we have to golf at least once more while we're here, perhaps on a course with lots of water features, so that we can use up the balls and not have to bring them home with us. (Luggage weight for the return journey is already a big consideration in all of our decisions about what to buy and what to do without).

After golfing, Chris went out for some cricket with the boys while I made his favourite (gourmet) mac n'cheese for supper and a mocha cake. It was warm enough to eat outside on the patio, though a little funny to be eating in the dark but warm air. The boys have both suffered some bug bites on their ankles, which have swelled up to give Sol a Cankle.

The final excitement to share this week has been the school sports carnivals. These are the opportunity for the four school "houses" to compete against each other for house points, as in Harry Potter. At Rio's school, the kids had sprayed their hair in their house colours and brought in decorated stuffed animals and other accoutrements. There was a very large parent paparrazi, well served by a cappucino van and a bake stand run by the parents' association. It was the warmest day of the week so far, so the kids were throwing off their shoes and donning their hats and sunscreen. In fact, most of them chose to participate in their sports events with bare feet, something which surprised me but Rio adapted to it happily.

Sol's school is so big that they divided the carnival up by year and the competitions didn't actually involve racing or competing against entrants from the other houses. Each house went to a station and did the activity, and then the results were recorded and compared to determine the winner later. Sol's house, Floreat, happened to win this time, though he didn't feel that he contributed much to that result as track and field isn't his forte.