Day 78 - Shell Beach

Kate: We woke up to more crappy weather so decided to leave a day early and head down to Kalbarri where the National Park famous for it's wildflowers is. I am the only one excited!! On the way out of Shark Bay (World Heritage Area), we stopped at Shell Beach. See pics!

Jasper: I'll continue from Kate's and talk about shell beach. It was amazing how it was a beach with no sand but just lots of little tiny shells. Also we went out just as it stopped raining again.

Handfuls of little teeny tiny shells

That's not sand but shells the kids are running on
(Maddy - "wait for me...")

A flower on the path to Shell Beach!

Day 76 - 77 Dolphins, Dolphins Dolphins!

Kate: Monkey Mia would be the perfect place to stop if the weather was warm and sunny but unfortunately we had 4 days of wind and rain. Patches of sun but overall not great. We were hit by a storm one night where we felt the van swaying every huge gust. (We were only 4 vans away from the beach). Fortunately the heavy rain stopped just as it was starting to drip into our pop out bed!

The whole dolphin feeding experience is heavily regulated by the rangers and in fact only a few people are picked to actually feed the dolphins. We went two days in a row and I was picked on the 2nd day which meant J & M scrambled next to me to "help"! It was still pretty cool standing in the water so close to a dolphin. Dinner in the "famous" Pearl Luggers Restaurant, made of shell bricks and also Australia's most westerly restaurant.

Jasper: The dolphin feeding was a bit crowded and there were only a few people that got picked but it was awesome when we did get to feed them and it was cool because the dolphins were so close to us. But then there was that horrible weather that made us all have a bit of cabin fever.

A very controlled feeding of the dolphins on a stormy morning - where's that
 aqua coloured water that's in the brochures?

Em's favourite animal - the dugong

Nicky

Second try on day 2 - Kate was picked!!!!

An afternoon on the nearly tourquoise water

Captain Maddy

Weather deteriorating again - boo hoo

Dinner at the Pearl Luggers Restaurant - made of shell bricks

Caravan Driving Language - according to Steve

Caravan Driving Language
From the first day on the road, Steve has been very amused by the way every caravan/campervan driver coming towards you on the road, waves to you as you pass each other.  He now has a theory on all the different waves he sees:

Single Finger Wave - "I don't want to acknowledge you but I know it's part of the caravanning etiquette"

Solid Hand Wave - hand up for a couple of seconds, no waving

The No Wave - "I don't want to be here"

The Queen Wave - with a flick of the wrist forward (Steve uses this!)

The Safe Wave - four fingers wave while thumbs stay attached to driver's wheel

Thumbs Up - Only from other Range Rover drivers. We've only seen about five of these in three months!!

Enthusiastic dual wave - passenger and driver waves.  They've been on the road too long.

Day 75 - Monkey Mia

Jasper: Today we drove to Monkey Mia but on the way, we stopped at Hamelin Pool on Shark Bay and we saw living rocks called stromatelites.  These are micro organisms all joined together to make stumpy rock formations.  They are famous because they are 3.5 billion years old and are the oldest living thing on the planet. The caravan park at Monkey Mia is right on the beach and right near where the dolphins are fed.  We are seeing them being fed tomorrow morning.  I can't wait and hopefully I get picked to feed them.

A stromatelite

They just look like rocks - you'd never know they were that old and that important!

Shark Bay is famous for it's shelly beaches.  At Hamelin Pool there is a quarry where
 they make shell bricks! Some of the buildings in the area are made of shell bricks.

Coastal wild flower

Day 74 - Quobba Blow Holes

Jasper: Today we had a relaxing morning until we went to the huge blowholes. They were sooooooooooooo big, loud and they were literally a hole in the rock . Steve did well letting us go to the edge of the little cliff. Then we went to the One Mile Jetty which is the longest jetty in WA so we did a train ride on it. Then we went back to the van park and had a really fun go on a jumping castle were it was so much fun.

Quobba

Waiting....

....for the blowhole to BLOW!

All that spray comes from this hole!

Wild coastline

Daggy trainride out on the Carnarvon Jetty

Day 73 - Carnarvon

Kate: We woke up to rain.  First time in two months.  I have to say it was a bit of a shock to the system.  Packing up the van when everything is wet is not much fun.  How lucky have we been up until now.  A short trip of only 3 hours today to Carnarvon.  This town has nothing much to offer but is reknowned for its fruit and veg plantations.  Apparently this little section of WA supplies 70% of WA's winter veges. It's also home to the One Mile Jetty - one of the longst in the southern hemisphere.  I don't know if it was the rain or a reflection of the town, but on a saturday arvo, everything was closed, even the touristy cafes on the "waterfront".  So an indulgent arvo of movies all squished in our pop out bed!!!

Jasper: When we got to Carnarvon we went to a book sale to get me a new book because I finished all five Skulddugery Pleasent books, Matt. I found a few books then we went to the video shop and later that night we watched Gullivers Travels all squished into the pop out bed.

It's so windy in Carnarvon, the trees grow sideways

Day 72 - Coral Bay (Manta Ray Day)

Jasper:I swam with manta rays!!!!!! It was amazing because I was right on top of it and it was doing loops to catch food. We swam with it for about 20 minutes and it was really easy to keep up. We also did a practice snorkel at the start and we saw white tip reef shark and I saw another shark with no tip on it and it was huge. We also saw 2 dugongs (pronounce do-gong) and a tiger shark, 2 dolphins turtles and we saw lots more manta rays of the boat. Em, STEVE this time, and I thought it was whatever I put in the last sentence of the whale shark entry. (Day 69)

Our manta ray

Our manta ray doing loops

Tiger shark

Just damn good snorkelling too!

Satisfied customers

One of Steve's favourite fish