This morning we gathered on the beach with a whole lot of
other tourist to watch the dolphin feeding. Years ago a local fisherman and his
wife started feeding dolphins at Monkey Mia and since then it got totally out
of hand. More and more tourists came to watch dolphins from nearby.
Most people
know you should not feed wild animals and after a couple of years they found
out why in regards to the dolphins. Lots of dolphins just hung around the
shallow waters of the bay on a daily base, waiting to be fed and therefor
stopped looking after their calf's, who can only drink milk if Mum is in deeper
water. As a result only few calf's
survived.
Restrictions came in place and nowadays the dolphins get fed
just 3 times in the early morning and just very small amounts. The tourists
have to keep to very strict rules in regards to contact with the local dolphins
and are supervised by the rangers and volunteers during the feeding times.
We still are not sure about the whole program but it’s good
to see they keep it very much under control (others may disagree on this) and
to see that they are actually monitoring a lot of information about the
dolphins.
All in all we were very excited to see these beautiful and smart
animals from up close.
Just before we packed up the emus came to say a final
goodbye which was nice.
On the road back to Denham we took the turn to the Francois
Peron National Park. First we stopped at the homestead to read about its
history. Afterwards we decided to lower our tire pressure to drive to The Big
Lagoon. We had heard different stories about the 4wd tracks. It’s very sandy
here and apparently lots of people get bogged. Even the ranger told us not to
try it in our car as he thought our clearance wasn’t high enough. We decided
against it.
Luckily we did as we reached the lagoon without any problems. It
was well worth the drive!
We didn’t dare going for a swim as we knew there were lots
of stonefish around in this area. Standing on one of their spikes is extremely
painful for days (the pain has often been compared by women as going into
labour). No thank you!
Sander really wanted to see the rest of the park too and as
all was going very smooth we decided to pay for a camping permit and drove up
to Cape Peron. It was definitely the most difficult four wheel driving we had
done so far. At one point it got so sandy we had to get the tyre pressure down
even more but we made it in the end.
Cape Peron was stunning. Red cliffs, white sandy beaches and
aqua blue waters. From Skipjack Point lookout we saw huge amounts of manta
rays, sting rays, sharks, turtles and a dolphin. Magic.
We decided to camp at Bottle Bay where we had a beach to
ourselves and watched the sun set in the ocean. Can it get any better?!
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