Tag Archive for 'Shark Bay'

Hamelin Pool

At the very end of Shark Bay not too far from the intersection with the Highway 1 there is a small sheep station by the name of Hamelin Pool. It’s not labeled by name on the above map, but there is a black dot representing Hamelin Pool at the very end of the eastern bay of Shark Bay. Hamelin Pool is not famous due to it’s sheep ranching history; it is famous because of it’s stromatolites. What’s a stromatolite you ask? Just the oldest living thing on Earth as you will soon see.

Driving down another dirt road it didn’t take us to long to reach the sheep station. The sheep station now serves primarily as a caravan park and the home of the world’s only stromatolite musuem:

The above picture is of the old telegraph station at Hamelin Pool. Years ago Hamelin Pool served as the main telegraph station for the entire Shark Bay region of Australia. Today Hamelin Pool continues it’s tradition of being the outlet that connects the region to the rest of Australia by hosting a large telecommunications tower near the station.

Even if you have no interest in seeing the stromatolites, the walk to the beach to view them is free and the walk is a quite pleasant 45 minute round trip walk. It is a good way to take a break and have lunch during a long drive through the Western Australian outback. As I walked down the beach the first thing I noticed was what appeared to be something that looked like old Roman ruins. However, what I found out was that here in Hamelin Pool the early settlers cut out large white blocks of sandstone to construct buildings with. All the old buildings in the area that remain were built with sandstone from this quarry.

Not to far from the quarry I reached the coastline and instantly noticed the blackish color to the beach:

I continued to follow the trail along the beach and found a grave that was the final resting place for one of the areas early settlers:

In Search of Stromatolites

Not to far past the grave is a dock that sticks out into the bay to allow visitors great view of the stromatolites:

These little clumps of black rock are actually the world’s oldest currently living form of life. The stromatolites are composed of a cyanobacteria that according to fossil records first came into existence 3.5 billion years ago during the Pre-Cambrian period of Earth’s early history. The cyanobacteria live in only extremely salty waters and the Earth’s early oceans were much more saltier than they are today. This caused the stromatolites to thrive at the time. Located at the very end of Shark Bay in the shallowest waters of the bay, the heavy concentrations of salt here has allowed the cyanobacteria to thrive here as well. The cyanobacteria grows upward out of the ocean and some of them have been known to grow as high as 1.5 meters.

Early scientists had long known about stromatolites through fossil records, but they had always considered them to be extinct. The reason believed that they went extinct was because the cyanobacteria conduct an early version of photosynthesis that released oxygen in the air. This oxygen is what led to the rise of life as we know it today. The combination of oceans becoming less salty and land based creatures walking on the fragile stromatolites and destroying them led to their extinction. However, in 1956 a Australian scientist “discovered” the stromatolites at Hamelin Pool. This would be the equivalent of a paleontologist discovering a living dinosaur. The early ranchers had long known about the stromatolites but never realized how special they were. They just thought they were a bunch of unusual rocks:

In the above picture you can see the wagon wheel ruts from when the early settlers brought their wagons filled with wool to be loaded on to waiting ships to take the wool to markets in Perth. Since 1956 no more wagons or people are allowed to walk on the stromatolites anymore due to the locals realizing how special these worthless rocks had become. Not all stromatolites have survived the abuse over the years and remains of dead stromatolites can be seen scattered on the beach:

Anyway it is interesting to think that life as we know it today is all because of what was thought to be useless rocks at Shark Bay, Western Australia. The stromatolites are just one of many strange things to be discovered in Australia.

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Denham 

There is plenty to see and do at Shark Bay besides going to Monkey Mia. I highly recommend it visiting Shark Bay to go and see the surrounding country side of the peninsula. A four wheel drive vehicle would be ideal to really experience the peninsula. Since we had a campervan we really had a hard time navigating the dirt roads on the peninsula that we weren’t supposed to take the campervan on. However, by driving slow and careful we were able to see some of the incredible areas on the peninsula.

Here is a view over looking the harbor at Denham:

You can see the various sailboats out on the water in this picture. What I will always remember about this picture was that after taking this shot; I had the scare of my life when I came face to face with a big black snake. It quickly slithered off once it saw me so I couldn’t get a picture, but taking a picture was the last thing on my mind. The only thing on my mind was hauling ass back to the campervan. Yet another encounter for me with some of Australia’s deadliest wildlife.

Eagle Bluff 

The best views of Shark Bay can be found from a place called Eagle Bluff. It took some time to get the campervan down that road, but it was worth the views. Here is a view looking towards the south from Eagle Bluff:

This is supposed to be the best spot in the area to view the tiger sharks that give Shark Bay it’s name. In the shallow water below we could see some of the fish swimming around but none of the tiger sharks. Right across from the cliff we were standing on was a small island:

If you look closely at the island you can see the white coloring that is actually bird guano. Decades ago intrepid outback pioneers dug up the guano on the island and sold it to farmers as fertilizer. Just goes to show if you think your job sucks, it’s still better than standing in the hot sun and digging bird crap for a living.

Here is the view looking towards the north:

The sliver of land sticking out of the bay was used by the Aborigines to catch fish. They used to make a sand bar extending from the sliver of land that would prevent the fish from swimming out to the center of the bay when the tide rolled out thus trapping the fish. Additionally near the sliver of land is a natural water spring that the Aborigines used as their water source as well. To this day local Aborigines still make use of the water source.

Across Shark Bay we could actually see a salt mine that is still in operation on the isolated peninsula that brackets the western side of the bay:

If you look closely at this picture you can see how the shallow sandy water turns into a darker green color towards the center of the bay:

The dark green color is the seaweed that grows in the salty Shark Bay waters and is what feeds the bay’s large colony of dugongs. From Eagle Bluff we then began hiking on a four wheel drive road towards the south. Looking eastward we could see the long lonely dirt we drove up to reach the bluff:

The trail continued to skirt the steep cliffs of the bay and all around us in the sand you could see the footprints of the various animals that call Shark Bay home:

Fortunately there were no more snakes. At the end of the trail we came to a lookout that provided a view of the southern end of the bay:

If you look really closely in the above picture, you can make out a handful of fishermen that were fishing along the beach that day. You couldn’t ask for better fishing weather than at Shark Bay. Actually you couldn’t ask for better weather for any outdoor activity than at Shark Bay.

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Arrival at Shark Bay

After the long lonely four hour drive from Kalbarri National Park we arrived in the small Shark Bay city of Denham. Denham is literally in the middle of no where. This map should give you a good indication of how isolated Shark Bay is from the rest of Australia:

Denham is located towards the tip of a long peninsula that extends up the middle of Shark Bay. Geraldton which is six hours down the road to the south is the only city of any size from Denham and Perth the state capitol is a 10-12 hour drive south of Denham. All the other dots you see on the map are either roadhouses or ranches. If you ever wanted to drop out from the world, Shark Bay is one of those places where you could do it.

Fortunately we rolled into Denham at a good time because the sunset over the Indian Ocean was going to begin soon. We rolled into a local caravan park where the friendly owner talked my ear off about Shark Bay. He wouldn’t be the last one though because a reoccurring theme a found from talking to people who live in the Shark Bay area is that they truly love living there. Once we got our campervan parked and everything settled the wife and I took a down to the beach to see the sunset. Denham’s harbor is filled with small sailboats, fishing boats, and even pearling boats. This is still a well known area in Australia for pearling and Denham has many shops that sell pearls at wholesale prices. Here is a picture of the sunset over the Indian Ocean from Denham:

As you can see from this picture their were quite a few clouds in the far horizon so we couldn’t actually see the sun set on the ocean but it was spectacular none the less.

Monkey Mia Beach Resort

The next morning we woke up early to head to the main attraction of the Shark Bay area and that is the dolphins of Monkey Mia. We left Denham at 7Am to travel to Monkey Mia. It only took us about 30 minutes to travel across the peninsula to Monkey Mia. Once we got to Monkey Mia we parked the campervan and proceeded to cook some breakfast. After eating some eggs and bacon, not to mention a big, fat cup of coffee we then proceeded down to the beach:

As you can tell from this picture the sand at Monkey Mia is a mixture of red and white grains. It really is a beautiful beach. The resort itself is really quite nice as well. The resort has a great museum that has displays about the dolphins and other wildlife of Shark Bay along with other displays that provide a historical perspective about the place. For example the name Monkey Mia is derived from the fact that many of the old pearlers that came to Monkey Mia in the 1800′s were from southeast Asia and Japan and many of them kept monkeys from their native lands as pets.

The local Aborigines did not have a word for monkeys since there are no monkeys in Australia and adopted the English word of monkey to describe them along with the Aboriginal word of mia which means many. So literally speaking Monkey Mia means the city of many monkeys. There may no longer be monkeys here anymore, but there sure are a lot of dolphins, as we were about to see.

The resort also has a theater with many interesting movies about the area, a well stocked gift shop, a restaurant that really isn’t that expensive considering how far out in the middle of no where you are, a hotel, cabins, and a caravan park. The resort also has a multitude of tour operators that can take you fishing, sailing, off roading, and a host of other activities. The resort is also well landscaped and even featured beautiful green grass, which is a rarity in this part of Australia:

The resort also had other visitors beside the tourists there. The beach was also filled with these guys, giant pelicans:

Don’t mess with these guys though, because they are aggressive and I saw them chase some people around the beach when they got to close. However, the only thing on our mind was seeing the dolphins that come in every morning to feed that makes this place so famous across Australia.

The Dolphins of Monkey Mia

We intentionally picked this day to see the dolphins of Monkey Mia because this day November 7th, was the same day the Melbourne Cup horse race was happening which meant everybody was watching the horse race and not the dolphins. So we had a much smaller than normal crowd to contend with to see the dolphins:

If you look closely, on the far left of the picture you see a guy with a red shirt holding a video camera. This was the same Korean travel documentary TV crew we had run into back at the Pinnacles. Were they ever surprised to see me again. Anyway it was about 8:30AM now and this is when the dolphins are supposed to start coming in. You could feel the anticipation in the crowd growing. Then my wife spotted the first dolphins to come in:

The first dolphin to visit Monkey Mia was back in the 1960′s when a dolphin named Holeyfin befriended the local fishermen. Holeyfin had offspring who she taught to also visit Monkey Mia and the local fisherman. This is what caused the dolphins today to be so friendly with the locals of Monkey Mia. Today four adult females visit the beach every day and park rangers feed the dolphins a small helping of fish. The park rangers never feed the dolphins too much because they don’t want the dolphins to become depended on humans and lose their skills to hunt for fish on their own. To learn more about the dolphins check out this link from the Monkey Mia Dolphins Organization. The dolphins came in real close to everyone standing in the water and I was able to get some really great shots of the dolphins:

Initially only two came in but eventually all four showed up. We could see other dolphins out in the distance that were to shy to come get food from the park rangers. The park rangers knew every dolphin by name. If you are wondering how the park rangers could tell apart the dolphins it is because each dolphin has a distinctive dorsal fin:

The park rangers also picked people out of the crowd to feed the dolphins. They understandably picked the kids to go feed the dolphins usually.

At least one critter was jealous of all the attention the dolphins were getting and decided to crash the party and get some attention of his own:

By getting this close to the dolphins you can really feel how intelligent the dolphins are. When you look into their eyes it just feels like it’s an intelligent animal looking back at you:

All in all it was a great way to spend the morning hanging out with these wonderful dolphins. Actually throughout the rest of the day the dolphins would randomly pop up at the beach to check people out. However, only the park rangers are allowed to touch and feed them because people can transmit disease to the dolphins while feeding them can cause them to become depended on humans for food. So if you go to Monkey Mia and the dolphins come up to you on the beach, don’t try to pet or feed them. For me I was impressed enough just watching them.

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