Day 50 Coral Bay to Carnarvon We got up at 6am ready for the ecotour to see the sea turtle, viewing coral and snorkelling. The sea is not very calm today and that was bad news for me. The hard coral we saw here are huge but only restricted to green, brown, blue, white and purple colours. The water was crystal clear and very green and we could see the white sand at the bottom. Some of the big "brain" corals span meters (bigger than the cruise boat) and it was visible on the water level. We had 2 snorkelling sessions. I went for the first session with a "noodle" and it was truly amazing. Afterwards I was seasick and I would only watched the colourful fishes swam by on the boat. Chee Kong did enjoyed both the sessions. On the way to Carnarvon, we were hit by very strong wind and rain. So we just had an early day stopping at a road stop at Minilya. It was the first rainy day since we left home.ss Day 51 Carnarvon As we approached Carnarvon, the landscape changed from flat land with occasionally hills into plantation. We saw plantations full of banana, capsicum, cornfields, tomato and even grapes. We stopped at the roadside and talked to Spanish farmers to see if they would sell us their pumpkins. Well, the pumpkins weren't riped yet but they could sell us capsicum. So we bought a kg of capsicum and the man kept giving us some exras so we ended up with 2 kgs. We saw some Chinese vegetables which they considered as weeds. We ended up with a big bunch of it. We insisted to give them some more money but they insisted to refuse. So we walked out with the capsicums, tomatos, basils, brocolli leaves and the Chinese vegetables for $6. What a bargain! Chee Kong wanted to visit the OTC telecommunication museum. The staff wanted to go home early so they shut the shop at 2:30pm. I wish we could do that when we were at work.
Day 52 Denham Monkey Mia Our first stop was at Hamelin Pool to see the 3.5 billion years old Stromatolites (the oldest living organisms on the planet) which was amazing. They also had a historical shell quarry. The shell was used as building material when building material was scarce. As we were driving to Denham, the oceans looked very blue and colours were striking. Denham was a really good looking but touristy town.
We stopped at Little Lagoon which was almost perfectly circular in shape. It was one of the birridas (gypsum clay pans) which is reddish in colour when it is dry. This particular land-locked saline lakes dried up but was flooded again and was full of bird life and fishes. Day 53 Monkey Mia Denham We followed the crowd to watch the dolphin feeding and I was one of the lucky people who got picked randomly to feed a dolphin. The dolphin snatched the fish off my hand so I missed a good photo. When we packed up ready to leave, an uninvited and inquisitive emu turned up at our doorstep.
The shell beach was covered by 10 meter deep little white shell. There was an historic shell quarry on the beach. The boardwalk on top of the Eagle Bluff gave a very good view of the Eagle Island where phopherous was mined as fertiliser and the marine life down below the Bluff. We saw sea turtle, sharks and sting rays but missed the dugongs. We walked on the pure white shells on the stunning Goulett Bluff. The water was crystal clear like any other beaches in the region.
We camped at Whalebone Bluff and we had the whole beach all by ourselves.