After several days of record heat here in Melbourne, last night the rain clouds decided to roll in. Not the perfect timing for a Monday morning (with no umbrella and lugging around an entire desks’ worth of work equipment/papers, plus workout clothes). My train was 10 minutes late and I desperately still needed some food from the supermarket, so 30 minutes late to work was not too bad considering. Thankfully I am still “on the bench” at work this week – so am using my time wisely: 1. Completing required training videos. 2. Writing this blog post. 3. Sitting on the phone for 1 hour with Travelocity/American Airlines trying to book my flight home in May 4. Taking a long lunch with co-workers at a busy Thai restaurant. 5. Looking at Oscar Red Carpet pictures online. Busy, busy day I tell ya.
I take you back now to the West Coast of Australia adventure:
The 10 hour drive was anything but exciting with not much more to see than desert, a couple of trees and more desert. The highlight of the trip was the half-way-point-stop-over in the second largest town on the west coast, Geraldton. Now, with all the hype this place received from the locals we spoke with, we were expecting the Las Vegas of Australia. What Geraldton actually is: a city, on the water , with one main street and about 4 neighborhoods of homes that look identical to each other. Granted, the beach was beautiful, but that was about all Geraldton had going for it.
Expecting the local restaurants to have some great seafood, we opted for the local family-owned place on the corner of the town’s square, "Skeetas." Looking back now, based on the name alone, we should have been more skeptical of the place. But we were trusting of the locals and gave it a try despite our hesitations. The interior resembled the dining hall of a nursing home, complete with padded chairs, communal tables and horribly pattered, worn out carpet. The icing on the cake (not even exaggerating): the center piece of the entire restaurant was a large fish tank housing a real life version of every single main character from Finding Nemo.
Based on the decor and mojo of the place, we did not have high hopes for the quality of the food. When I say the food was sub-par, it was not only extremely over-priced, but really, not very tasty – especially for a town on the water – Fresh Seafood should be its specialty! We hurried out of there to continue our journey (after taking the "scenic route" out of town - which ended up being nothing more than a huge horseshoe road along the coast leading back to the highway with an amazing view of the backs of warehouses.) Needless to say, we were NOT impressed with Geraldton and hoped we never had to encounter the place again.
Finally arriving about dinnertime in Shark Cove Bay, we enter into the campervan park, found our amazing cabin and cooked up some dinner. The next day we drove about 30 minutes to see the dolphins at Monkey Mia. They come into the cove 4 times a day for feeding by the trainers based at the National Park. They had not been in to feed for the past 10 days, so that was our lucky day that they actually showed up! I stayed up on the boardwalk to look down into the water – but Adam and Emily walked right up to the water’s edge. When they asked for volunteers, Adam did’t even raise his hand, but the trainer picked him out of the crowd regardless (it may have been because of the blatantly obvious “tourist look” of a graphic tee, cargo shorts and bright red Canada Leaves hat!) They called him forward to feed one of the dolphins a fish – and said he could bring someone with him. Bec and I literally had to yell down to them, “Go, Go- they called you – you both can go!” (They looked dumfounded and confused as to what was going on.) We of course had to take heaps of pictures of this momentous occasion (it really was not as exciting as watching some of the other “characters” heading down the beach to watch the feeding.)
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| Ohhh some of the people you see... |
After the feeding was over, we set out on a “Wildlife Cruise.” Promised to see dolphins, manta rays and dugongs (related to the manatee and native to Australia), we hopped aboard the sailboat sans shoes (I was allowed to bring my walking cast, but all other shoes, including my lone left sandal had to stay on the dock to “preserve the condition of the boat”) and headed out into the middle of the ocean. The skippers on the boat were two young guys who grew up in Geraldton (poor guys) and had moved to Monkey Mia to work on the reserve. They chatted with us the whole time (along with the 10 year old there with her two siblings who were “leaving her out, so she had no other friends to talk to or hang out with.”) Half way through this wildlife tour, and still no wildlife to be seen, the most exciting bit occurred when one of the other kids aboard the boat spotted a water snake gliding in the current. The poor skippers tried about 5 other spots in the ocean where animals could usually be seen. At this point though, I gave up seeing anything and just settled for a sailboat cruise instead. Pulling back into the marina, we said farewell to the skippers (which they returned with an invite New Years Eve beach party the following night) and headed back to the 4x4 to do some off-roading around the area. There were several coves and lookouts down dirt paths off the main highway – so we took the rest of the afternoon to cruise around these turnoffs.
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| Adam was less than amused to not have seen any wildlife. |
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| Bec got to hoist the sail! |
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| Dugong |
The next day was New Years Eve. We spent the morning on the beach and did a few more off-roading trips, including one to Shell Beach – literally miles and miles of tiny white sea shells make up the beach – and it had to of been at least 800meters of walking to even reach the water – it was huge! The water was really shallow for about 1 mile or more, so we walked out for a bit (well as long as my ankle let me before I really started to feel it hurting) and came back in. After cleaning up and eating some dinner, Bec and I marched down to one of the two local restaurant/pubs in Shark Cove for the live New Years Eve festivities (later in the night, yes – we attempted to call Yellow Cab to drive us back to the beach party to meet up with the Skippers.) Obviously that plan failed due to the fact that 1. The beach was 30 minutes away and 2. The town was so small, there were no cabs. We instead made friends with a group of people also there for the live bands and the midnight countdown (two of which we convinced to take us fishing the next morning at 7AM!) By the end of the night, Bec and I were the famous North Americans (half these people had never left WA once in their lives – so America was like the Golden Land Destination for them) at both the local establishments (they both had different genres of music playing – so we had to test out both!)
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| Shell Beach |
7AM came WAY too fast the next morning – and we weren’t even too sure if these guys would show up to actually take us fishing. But indeed, there they were outside the bait shop waiting for us! We drove down to another national park nearby that had a large bay, perfect for kayaking and fishing (I thought I would be sick between the rocky, sandy, twisting roads we had to drive through and the smell of the meat pies the guys were eating in the front seat). Talking with them, we found out they were from Geraldton and would probably never leave (I over-enthusiastically announced my shock at this statement) and that they were both 20 years old and still at Uni. (Uni, University, College, same thing.) Bec and I exchanged that look again of- where are we and what did we get ourselves into!? But taking everything in stride, we had a fantastic time out on the water (unfortunately, catching no fish – but soaking up some rays for the rest of the day.)
The next morning we left early to head back to Perth. We took the time to stop off at some famous spots along the way: The Pinnacles and Stromatolites. Just in case you don't know, the definition of the two are as follows:
The Pinnacles - Limestone formations contained within Nambung National Park,
that were formed from seashells in an earlier epoch rich in marine life. These shells were broken down into lime rich sands which were blown inland to form high mobile dunes. |
| The Pinnacles |
Stromatolites - Layered accretionary structures formed in shallow water by the trapping, binding and cementation of sedimentary grains by biofilms of microorganisms, especially cyanobacteria (commonly known as blue-green algae). Stromatolites provide some of the most ancient records of life on Earth.
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| Stromatolites |
Both were pretty neat to see. At the half-way point we stopped in yes, Geraldton for some lunch, because that was literally the only viable place we had seen in hours (passing characters on the road as we went, like the biker with “I love Sluts” written across the back of his helmet.) By this point - I was getting a bit homesick to be back in Melbourne, but we still had a couple more days to go.
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