Day 8: Monkey Mia: Dolphins and Dugongs

Day 8 Monkey Mia: Dolphins and Dugongs

 This morning’s adventures began with meeting and feeding the famous Monkey Mia dolphins.  Monkey Mia is a resort run by the Australian Department of Conservation and focuses on wildlife education and conservation within a fantastic setting of seaside fun.  We joined a hundred or so other visitors on the beach to be introduced to the eleven dolphins who came in near the shore – as much to interact with people as to be fed. In fact, only 5 of the dolphins are ever fed – the five that remain from when the resort was set up and no one had though of the adverse consequences – and they are only given a small amount….They have to find their own food and live a normal dolphin life for the rest of the day.  

The ranger told us that it is a different group of dolphins that come in every day – as though they are changing the cast for each performance….  There were mothers and babies – and one large male (unusual, apparently). John and I were both chosen to help with the feed – Rob and Judith had to save their starring roles for later….

We then went out for a 3 hour sail aboard the Aristocat catamaran – a terrific and informative trip around Shark Bay. After Rob had helped to raise the sail, we set off.  We stopped at the black pearl farm to gain an appreciation of the difficulties and innovations around pearl farming – much more interesting than it sounds at first… We fed the Shark Bay Pink Snapper school that lives under the  farm (They were gorgeous – I’m glad I had the barramundi for dinner last night instead….) and then sailed off to find sea turtles and dugongs – who obligingly popped up within 10 metres of the boat for photographs…

On the return journey, several passengers – including Rob and Judith – got into the boom net at the stern of the boat and rode through the wake.  The crew warned that loose ‘bathers’ could easily come off in the process – and Rob’s nearly did – but dignity was (just) maintained – and it did look like fun!

After a lovely lunch at the resort, we set off for the 4 hour drive back to Kalbarri, searching the bush for wildlife, the horizon for Willie Willies – and singing along to ABBA. In the end, it only took 3 and a half hours – Sylvia’s ‘low flying’ over the straight and empty roads had us to the Kalbarri Edge Resort easily in time to change and walk over to a spectacular meal at 7.  One thing this trip hasn’t lacked is unbelievably good food – when your starter consists of three oysters, eight prawns and three crayfish ‘bugs’ on a bed of Asian salad, you know you are in for yet another gastronomic experience!

Day 7 Kalbarri to Monkey Mia

Day 7 Kalbarri to Monkey Mia

We set off on what was a very eventful day at around 8am – first along a dirt road through Kalbarri National Park to Nature’s Window to admire the rock formations around the Murchison River Gorge. A tiny Thorny Devil lizard basked in the sun – an emu walked along through the scrub – and a monitor lizard ran quickly past….all just normal sights in the Western Australian bush.

A couple of hours’ drive overtaking road trains of two, three, four containers brought us to Billabong Roadhouse where we purchased a picnic lunch to eat at Hamelin Pool.  Hamelin Pool s where the world’s most spectacular display of stromatolites is found – cyanobacterial formations – descendents of the earth’s primordial soup that created the atmosphere - and the foundation of all life.  Rob had wanted to see them since he was a child…and it was the main reason that Western Australia was included in our itinerary.  They were very interesting – especially once we all understood exactly what they were – and we left saying that really all we needed to see now was a kangaroo and our visit would be complete….   We also saw another large emu – accompanied by three chicks.  We watched them all for a while and then carried on, driving to Seashell Beach, Eagle Bluff, Denham and finally Monkey Mia….stopping at each to marvel at a quarry for rocks made of seashells, sharks and rays swimming in the clear, shallow seas and looking for wedge-tailed eagles and dugongs….We’ll have to save those sights for tomorrow, though, as they clearly thought we had seen enough for today!

Not even ½ mile down the road we saw a Euro – a type of kangaroo with longer ears and a thicker tail than more familiar breeds…. He was sitting under a tree but then showed off his jump, moving just far enough away so that we will have to play ‘Where’s Wallaby’ in the photos.
The scenery was spectacular - and yet another case study for my geographers - 'Willie Willies' rose over the horizon in the heat, areas that had been burnt out by bush fires showed the amazing ability of nature to rejuvenate - and fire breaks and drainage ditches showed man's attempts to manage this extreme environment.

Our room at the Monkey Resort overlooks the turquoise water of Shark Bay – and dinner was on the veranda  - absolutely delicious – very fresh and an interesting mix of seafood, Asian and European flavours…… A bit of stargazing – we want to find the Southern Cross – and off to bed after an amazing day.

Day 6 Perth to Kalgarri

Day 6 Perth to Kalbarri

I awoke at 5:45 – it’s 3 hours earlier here than Sydney – and went out to find coffee. Even though we were right in the city centre, it took some finding… I eventually found a Vietnamese French café, full of construction workers, that had been open since 5:30.  By the time I got the coffee, it was well past 6 and several other places had opened….never mind!

Sylvia from WA Tours arrived to collect us at 7 – in her 4WD Land Rover; we collected John and Judith, a couple from Edinburgh here for their son’s wedding – still a week away – and set off through the northern suburbs of Perth, past eucalyptus groves and flowering banksies and acacias, nearly at the end of their flowering season.  We missed the best of the wildflowers by about two weeks, it seems. Sylvia enjoys leading wildflower tours most of all – and told us all about the glories we had missed.

Our first stop was for coffee at a café on the beach at Lancelin.  There was much excitement because later in the day the patron was to be interviewed for a television programme called ‘Our Town’.  The ‘town’ was tiny – I imagine they were interviewing nearly everyone – nevertheless, it was a pleasant stop and our first view of the turquoise blue sea set off by glistening white sand dunes – a bit like the south shore of Long Island might have been in the 1940s or 50s.

Our next stop was to explore the Pinnacles Desert – a curious area of yellow sand and scrub punctuated by 180,000 (Yes, someone counted) strange calcified rock structures. No one knows exactly how or when they were formed – it could have been as recent as 6000 or as long as 30,000 years ago.  They stick out of the sand, surrounded by the tracks of kangaroo and emu (We did see an emu wandering through.), some with stripes of pink laterite, some with patches of black lichen – and some crumbling like honeycomb from climatic effects.

The coastal scenery changed to scrubland as well – sandy soil from there north to nearly Kalbarri, first yellow, then gradually redder as we neared the areas heavy with iron ore.  The colours of the sheep’s coats changed too – from a dirty brown to a lighter, almost reddish colour.

We all looked out for kangaroo – but only John saw any other than those lying by the roadside, having been hit by someone else’s 4x4.

After the Pinnacles we drove for ages – well something like an hour and a half – but our next stop was Dongara the aim being to eat at a place called the little starfish – a tiny seaside shack restaurant that made it into the guide book – unfortunately it was closed for a special function so we had to find a place that wasn’t in the book but turned out to be pretty cool even though three men were busy tying a sheep carcass to a steel pole for a roast – it was vaguely reminiscent of a scene I once saw in a Greek island in the 80s. In fact the whole place reeks of a world long gone and a kind of naive innocence the rest of the western world has long since lost and dearly misses. I have to admit – I didn’t really have great hopes for Australia as being a destination. I imagined it would be very similar to Europe and America and in a sense it is. But in another it is totally different. There is a feeling of frontier just gone and most of the places have a history stretching back just 100 years or so and most things are quite fresh and hopeful. You can tell in another hundred years or maybe even less it will have all gone and if they are lucky they will bemoan what they have lost. Even so, at the moment – whatever it is they still have it and it is quite refreshing to experience.

From Dongara we headed off to the Hutt lagoon a lake made strikingly pink by natural algae. It is so pink it looks as if they poured gallons of food colour into it. But it isn’t – it is totally natural and so high in beta carotene that they mine it for export. It would seem from Sylvia’s descriptions that most of Australia is being mined for the various resources that it is rich in and they are busy shipping it overseas as quick as they can pull it out. Travelling around like this looking at one natural wonder after another begins to remind me of our trip around Egypt. At first it is awe inspiring then after a while the awe subsides into the everyday and you get quite glad when the end of the day arrives and you get to your hotel room so you can shower and chill a little bit and reflect on what it is that you have seen. To be honest what we have seen is humbling.

Day 5 Sydney again

Our first nearly normal night – we were each up for an hour or so – but that’s a tremendous improvement! It’s the American Thanksgiving today, so we watched the breakfast news with President Obama pardoning a turkey – and then the semi-finals of a professional surfing competition….not something you’d see on telly in the UK… Today’s main mission was to go to Bondi Beach – never mind that it was windy and raining – just a typical British summer’s day…..  The receptionist at our hotel talked us through the procedure: buy a bus ticket from a City Convenience store, find bus stop E at Circular Quay and get off at the last stop…. In fact it was quite easy – and it was interesting seeing some other areas of Sydney – like the streetside Sky News broadcasting room, complete with reporter awaiting his camera link –  it was very reminiscent of a Reeperbahn window - and a demonstration outside a courthouse against some Sydney lawyers who had apparently committed fraud. (Who would have thought that from a bunch of lawyers?)  We also passed the ANZAC memorial, some very nice and some not so nice shopping and residential areas – the outskirts reminded us more of some neighbourhoods in Miami than those in New York – and I was expecting Bondi Beach to be a bit like Miami Beach as a consequence…. Well, it wasn’t. In fact, Rob said it reminded him of Margate!  It was clearly aimed at backpackers and surfers, though the coastal walk to Coogee was fantastic.  

We watched a few hardy surfers and had a coffee at a café frequented by aging hippies. (We passed on both the Ayervedic massage and the light-up reindeer antlers…) We  walked the coastal path and found the ‘Sculpture Garden’, duly noting the 3 pieces of sculpture.  We never did see any of the Aboriginal carvings that are supposedly along the path, but did see plenty of Australians exercising at the specially-designed stations along the way. The Australians – well the ones we have met so far seem obsessed with exercise – actually it would be fairer to say that they were obsessed with exercising in a way that showed everybody that they were exercising.

We grabbed the bus back into the city and walked around the quay a bit more, looking at the various souvenirs on offer and planning some of our Christmas shopping.   There you are, folks – act surprised!

Rob didn’t want to go to the Royal Botanical Gardens, so we walked all the way around the Opera House and then explored a Woolworth’s supermarket….looking at the seaweed flavoured rice cakes and double coated Tim Tams before settling on some muesli bars and ginger biscuits to take on the plane.

We collected our luggage from the hotel and set off for the airport. Jetstar this time – to Perth.  We are due in around 10pm and our tour of Western Australia begins at 7 tomorrow morning…so I doubt I’ll regale you with tales of Jetstar as there will be many more adventures before tomorrow evening!

Day 4 Sydney

Day 4 Sydney

An eight hour flight from Singapore to Sydney but we were upgraded (BA seems to know how to make up for my previous complaints.) – so the food was good and we actually slept!  By coincidence, my nephew was also to be at Sydney airport this morning – heading home for Thanksgiving after 4 months study abroad – and we tried to link up….but we certainly didn’t see him anywhere, so that didn’t work out.

We took the airlink train into the city - $16 each…but apparently less than $4 from any station other than the airport….and were entertained by two small Australian boys and their Transformers.  The airlink station is just down from our hotel – though of course we came out the wrong exit and walked 4 blocks instead – but still very easy and very central. The weather is perfect, a little over 20 degrees – a 40 degree plus heatwave just broke yesterday and it is as though the whole city has sprung to life in the cooler temperatures.  It felt very like New York, with people hurrying to work, coffee in hand, against a mix of brownstone and modern buildings – they are clearly not the techno-slaves the Singaporeans are….though, like everywhere,  there are still some people plugged in!

We checked in to our hotel but even with their best efforts the room couldn’t be ready for a couple of hours, so we walked up to ‘The Rocks’ for breakfast and a bit of sightseeing.  We photographed the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, breakfasted in Bakehouse Square and visited the ‘Argyle Cut’ and Rock Discovery Centre which explores the history of Sydney – what is known about the indigenous Aboriginal cultures and the tragedy of its destruction as the Europeans arrived.

Our room was ready when we got back to the hotel. We showered and napped before heading out again to explore more of the city – particularly the recently excavated ruins of the original settlement that were found under the foundations of the YMCA.

Definitely one of the highlights was the Australian Hotel – the oldest continuously licensed establishment in Sydney – and famous as much for its emu, kangaroo and crocodile pizzas as for its huge range of Australian beers.  We had a ½ and ½ emu and kangaroo pizza – the emu was much like ostrich but the kangaroo was very tasty indeed and we’ll be looking out for that again.  We bought some ‘Tim Tams’ for dessert – one small packet of those biscuits costs over £16 in the UK….and, to be honest, they’re not too different to ‘Penguins’ except for a more flowery taste and maybe thicker chocolate!

Day 3 Singapore

The hotel breakfast, like the airport transit lounge, catered for every possible international taste – everything from Chinese pickles, fried rice and wontons through cold meats and salad to cereals, fruits, a full American breakfast and a selection of pastries. Consequently, we ate far too much and it’s a good thing we planned to spend the day walking around…..

We left the hotel quite early, the Chinese food court was only just opening up, a few sleepy souls at breakfast. It was amusing, though, to pass a building site and see the entire workforce exercising together before beginning their day!

We walked across garden-trimmed bridges, through Chinatown and to the old harbour at Clarke’s Quay – now converted to trendy restaurants and an adult ‘playground’ with extreme swings and a reverse bungee jump. We walked down Orchard Road, past the luxury boutiques and hotels – all dressed up for Christmas, stopping in a café to cool off and rest for the next stint. We walked along the river past the parliament and old colonial buildings, visiting the Asian Cultures Museum and Merlion Park – which has a large statue of the symbol of Singapore – a creature with a lion’s head and fishes’ tail.  We stopped again and I had a green tea smoothie, which turned out to be a mistake. I ordered it because I remembered the lovely green tea ice cream that we had in China, but this was too strong and too sweet. I’m not sure it was how it was meant to be, though,  because the girl who made it was squinting to read the recipe as she did it…..

From Merlion Park, there is an amazing view of the Harbour Marine Development – three skyscrapers with a boat shaped garden connecting them at roof level – the iconic view of modern Singapore. The whole city will make an excellent case study for my year 11 geographers – for sustainability and ‘greening’. So many of the newer buildings have unexpected gardens climbing up them – or inserted between floors – and the water and transport management systems are outstanding. I wouldn’t mind living here for a while…..

We took one of the ‘bumboats’ back to Clarke’s Quay, learning about Singapore’s history and watching for the engaging bronze sculptures along the Esplanade and river walk.  Then we returned to Chinatown, with the market in full swing – so that Rob could practise his haggling skills for some more electronics.

By this time, our feet were aching a bit and the sky was beginning to look a little threatening, so we returned to the hotel to collect our luggage and head out to the airport for our overnight flight to Sydney.

As on the way into the city, we watched the people as much as the scenery – nearly everyone had a phone or tablet…one girl had two – one each hand! There was one older gentleman with a Louis Vuitton bag, knitting a pink cardigan  - and a grandmother and mother entertaining a very young baby – but otherwise everyone, literally everyone, was plugged in to some sort of device.  It’s the same here at the airport – other than those sleeping in the ‘Snoozing Lounge’ – and what a lovely idea that is! - every single person is plugged in – thumbs waggling or head nodding or just glued to whatever they’ve downloaded for the trip.  It makes me feel very old sometimes that I remember when you had to put quarters in the arm of a chair to watch a little tv or actually turn the pages of a book!

Days 1 and 2 – London to Singapore

Lovely Steve drove us to the train station and with a last wave to Clare who just happened to be passing (That was a pleasant surprise!), we were off. As usual public transport in the UK was outrageously expensive….it cost as much to get to Heathrow as a return flight to Sweden….

We were a bit anxious at check-in after Saturday’s difficulties, but as soon as we were speaking to a real person, all problems disappeared and we were off to do our airport shopping…..a keyboard for the Kindle, a fold-up bag to be a larger carryon for the way back, a knee brace for Rob….all essentials!  My check-in bag came to exactly 15kg – the limit for some of our Australian internal flights….Rob’s was a kg less – but he was wearing his boots – and I have all the travel guides!

The flight was long and uneventful. Terrible food again – I guess that customer survey I filled in after last time hasn’t had any impact at all…..We did manage to doze for a lot of it though which was a bonus!

We arrived at Singapore’s very modern Changi Airport right on time – 4pm here, 5am in the UK.  The airport is clearly set up for millions of passengers just passing through. There were shops, restaurants, lounges, etc. even before immigration – most very Western – but facilities for everyone: a cold water drinking fountain next to a boiling water tap for the Chinese to make their tea and instant noodles; a bank of squat toilets (seen as so much more hygienic by the Chinese) next to a bank of Western toilets for those of us who inevitably get our trousers wet in the Chinese version…..

Immigration was a breeze…15 queues, no one waiting more than 10 minutes, friendly officers and a basket of welcome sweeties on the desk!

We tackled the public transport system straight away – very easy to use, everything in English, and very pleasant train journey – much overground – into the city.  The similarities with Shanghai were immediately apparent: traditional Chinese pagodas in gardens surrounded by enormous blocks of flats with washing hanging out and modern office buildings.  We arrived in Chinatown and walked the 10 minutes to our hotel – not too onerous, even with our luggage, in the 30 degree heat and 80% humidity….We are on the Equator after all.  We passed myriads of Chinese streetside cafes – there’s tomorrow’s lunch, for sure – and checked in, just too late for a swim this evening….but I’m sure we’ll be up early tomorrow!  We did notice that prices seem very cheap – both for public transport and a meal in the cafes.

We decided to spend this evening in the hotel’s streetside café – Rob videoing and me typing our first impressions…. A full day tomorrow and then the overnight flight to Sydney.  I have to say, I wish we had booked an extra day here – it seems to be our kind of town!

The evening before

Frustration - BA's online checkin isn't working;the phone line shut at 8pm and customer relations isn't available until Monday! Now I understand why I know so many people who won't fly with BA!  Well, we're packed and ready - blog set up and catsitter sorted (She does know something's up though - she recognises the suitcases!)  Hope you'll read and enjoy our adventures in the Land Downunder....will let you know when we're there!