Quobba - Shark Bay

Our last blog post was at Carnarvon. While we were there we spent a day driving up the rugged coast to the north, to an area known as "Quobba". This is an area that featured in a TV documentary a few years ago about people who had been visiting there for years and "free camping" in the nooks and crannies along the coves and beaches, and the authorities were taking steps to stop this. Well, it has been regulated somewhat, but not stopped. It  now costs money and has some minimal health services, but there are still makeshift shacks and camps there (a bit like the camps in the dunes north of Stockton NSW)  plus some more up-market travelling rigs. It's listed in the Camps 6 travelling guide that we use a lot.

Anyway, we visited there on a day trip only, and there are some photos below. We had a close call driving,  nearly cleaning up 4 wild goats, including a young "kid", that chose to appear out of the scrub and cross the road in front of us, in line, but fortunately just beyond a cattle grid that I had slowed down for. I didn't know M used words like that!

M visited the Gwoonwardu Mia (Gascoyne Aboriginal Heritage & Cultural Centre) - just opened 2 months ago, completely run by Aboriginal people - their stories, art, cuture and interactive displays were so well done, so moving..

We went to the growers markets on the last day - cheap bananas, greens and preserves - not to mention donuts.  The Anglicans were there doing the BBQ and an older Anglican lady selling her books of handwritten prayers and cards and inviting us to Church.

After Carnarvon, we moved on to the south, a bit over 300km to Shark Bay, where we are having a lazy day, the last of 4 days in a van park at Denham. We have a great site with a view out across the bay to the West. The Cape that we can just see on the horizon is the furthest point west on the continent and is near where Dirk Hartog left his pewter plate (1616) many years before Cook laid his posession claim on the East Coast.

Shark Bay really is a beautiful place, listed World Heritage, with a great variety of natural scenery, wildlife and marine life. We attended a church service at the little Anglican Church, made out of calcified shell blocks, here in Denham on Sunday and yesterday spent the day driving around the Francois Peron National Park, over 100kms of rugged sand tracks to the furthest point north, Cape Peron. There are some photos below and M will provide some more info.

Warning sign at Quobba Point, near the blowholes,where the big waves roll in from the Indian Ocean
(the sea was as flat as a pancake the day we were there)

The first blast from the blowhole is air, forced ahead of the water

...and then the water seems to recede back into the holes

The information plaques on the memorial to HMAS Sydney

The memorial looks out over the Indian Ocean opposite where the battle was fought

Down now to Shark Bay, a stop to look at the wildflowers on a claypan in the Francois Peron National Park. You can see the nature of the sand tracks in the background that we were following - we were able to stop here because of the hard surface of the pan - some of these pans (called Birridas are either salt or gypsum).  The exciting sand tracks  made it necessary to keep driving momentum so I could not stop and take picures of all the wildflowers but I was just awed by the vegetation patterns - red sandy plains dominated by desert-adapted acacias and hakeas and grevilleas at their most northern range on the peninsula.  The Shark Bay daisy (a creeper) that shows its mauve to pink flowers in and above the other  shrubs.  Interspersed amonsgt the wattles were pink parakeelyas and red Eremophilia glabra, white smoke bush and lambs tails.  The spinifex here is the green furry kind that hugs the sides of the track underneath the other shrubs - just beautiful. As you looked across the landscape you could see a rounded carpet of green, greys, yellows and white of all shades - stunning - one can never tire of seeing such beauty.

These are actual animal tracks in the sand just near the claypan. There is a multitude of small native animals around here, and some ferral cats and foxes, unfortunately still - although the baiting program has almost eliminated the foxes but the cats don't take baits so they are trying other methods.  The bilby and mallee fowl have been sucessfully reintroduced in the Project Eden program because of the successful reduction in feral animals.  The Project also hopes to introduce the captive bred banded hare wallaby and mala as well.

This is "Big Lagoon", the first place we visited in the park

Cape Peron, right at the top - stunning colours!

Picnic lunch at Cape Peron - we watched a dugong swim buy here while we ate our lunch

Looking for Dirk Hartog (wrong Cape!)

A sign on the walk. "Wanamalu" is the aboriginal name for the cormorants (see below) - great walk through the flowers on a red sandy track - we saw a blue Varigated Wren and a lizard or two.  Ron had seen a Woma python on the side of the road earlier.

Another sign at the top of the Cape that describes the meeting of the sea currents that bring such diverse marine life

On the walk. Look closely and see the myriad bird life at the water's edge, mostly cormorants (click on these photos to enlarge them)....not my best side..

Mostly cormorants - We stood at a lookout at the end of the Cape looking down into the clear waters below.  You could see the line of the sea grass bed about 200m from the shore. While we were here we watched a school of hundreds of fish milling around the rocks close to the shore - then we saw the shark - about 10-12 ft probably a tiger shark gliding along the gutter between  the sea grass and the shore - the fish were hiding in the shallows.  We saw a sea turtle and some baby black rays all staying in the shallows away from Jaws.

This is a view from the caravan park in Denham where are now. We are up on a higher level, a sort of plateau in the park towards the back, that has his magnificient view across the bay. We leave here early in the morning for Kalbarri, about 400km to the south