We had a relatively easy drive yesterday to the Shark Bay peninsula, which was actually handy since Nick woke up not feeling so great. We stayed at a free camp at Eagle Bluff – even saw a couple flying around, which is just behind the beach along the western side of the peninsula. The weather is beautiful – still not warm enough to swim but sunny, shorts and t-shirts, and that’s enough to keep me happy for the moment. There was no-one else there, two other people turned up later in the afternoon but as water from the lagoon seemed to be covering the track they both turned around (2WD). We didn’t attempt to cross it because it looked quite deep but just drove along the side in the sand for a bit and set up there since it was just for one night. We ended up facing exactly the right way, east-west, so that we got a view of the sun setting over a sparkling ocean through one window of the tent, and from the other side, where I was washing up after dinner, I had an uninterrupted view of the full moon rising over the horizon, just magic. The photos of course don’t do it justice….
On the way there we stopped at Hamelin Pool to see some more live stromatolites, quite a bit more than at Lake Thetis and with a bit of a better boardwalk to see them from. There were also some dead ones (which have died as the water level has reduced) which are bright red on the top, I think from iron in the sand/soil? The sand around there was full of tiny shells too, which has turned into limestone a bit inland and they even used to cut it with saws and use it to build buildings.
Once we got to Eagle Bluff where we were camping, Nick slept it off in the tent in the afternoon and I took the kids to a nearby boardwalk which allows you to look down over the clear shallow water below the cliff, where, sometimes, you can apparently see turtles, dugongs etc etc swimming along…. But not when we were there. Apparently the sea grass forest here is world heritage listed and is one of the biggest in the world, which is why it’s such a good place for dugongs. We all had an early night and headed off this morning to Denham to buy a few things before meeting up with the Ralhs to go up into the Francois Peron NP together. We did our 4WD course with them in February and they’re basically doing the same trip in a camper trailer but with 4 kids! Their youngest two are the same ages as ours so Conor and Daniel are very excited at the prospect of other kids to play with – it turns out that Ben even has some pokemon cards! We’ve had a nice lunch at Peron Homestead anyway (saving the artesian spring for on the way back), and have now lowered our tyre pressure and are feeling very intrepid, heading north. One of the campsites is closed for renovation, and apparently there’s a king tide today so another one will be hard to get into, so there isn’t much choice of where to go, but they’re all supposed to be beautiful….
No comments:
Post a Comment