Monkey Mia, Shark Bay, September 1997

Monkey Mia, on the shore of Shark Bay, is famous as the place that the dolphins come to the shore to be petted by humans. Every morning 2-3 busloads of people arrive and wade knee high into the water to stand around up to about 6 dolphins. Normally only a couple turn up. If you're staying there, you can see dolphins at other times. They often seemed to swim past at about 5ish.

The main Greyhound bus doesn't go there. You have to get off at a roadhouse and wait for a shuttle bus to take you onto Monkey Mia and Denham, the nearest main town. Unfortunately, the shuttle bus only runs 3 days a week, so I had the choice of staying 2 days or more. I chose 4 days. This was more time than anyone could possibly need at Monkey Mia, unless they're there for the fishing, which is world class. There used to be a bus that ran between Monkey Mia and Denham, but it stopped operating the week before I arrived due to lack of demand.

There isn't actually anything in Monkey Mia apart from a caravan site. I booked an on-site van. They'd run out of 4 berths at $35 a night, so I had a 6 berth one for $50. Backpackers share the 6 berth vans, which must be very cramped. Where you're supposed to put your luggage I don't know. There was also a shop there, a café and a restaurant with a small bar attached. I was the last person in the bar almost every night even though I usually went to bed long before 10pm. It's not exactly a happening place.

One of the reasons I decided to stay for 4 days was that I wanted to do diving. There are a number of interesting sounding shipwrecks off of there, one of which has been declared a marine park especially for divers. I was told to give the Shark Bay Tourist Centre a ring [(08) 9948 1253]. When I did, they told me that they'd been trying to organise a dive trip that day, but there hadn't been enough people. The nearest place to hire kit from was Geraldton, well over 300kms away, so just organising a one day trip was a Herculean task. So yet again I was disappointed on the diving. Unless you're extremely lucky, the only way to go diving in Shark Bay would be to arrange it well in advance with a whole group of you. It's a great shame because there must be some truly great sites out there that no-one ever visits.

Shark Bay is a World Heritage site. The Australian tourist board makes a huge thing of World Heritage sites. I don't suppose anyone could name most of the British ones, and there are some. The main reason is that it's the biggest seagrass meadow in the world. This makes the area very important ecologically, though this hasn't stopped the WA government from permitting oil drilling to go ahead in the area.

The shape of the peninsula on which Monkey Mia is situated means that the water in Shark Bay is hypersaline, with a salt concentration of over twice normal sea water at the southern end. This has a number of different factors. One is that dugongs, because they have a high salt tolerance, can safely breed there in relatively safety. Sharks can't survive in those conditions.

Another result of the hypersalinity is that small bi-valve shellfish can breed in huge numbers without any natural predators. There is a beach that consists entirely of these shells. It's rather imaginatively named "Shell Beach". If you're really, really bored you can go on a tour to visit the beach. It's just like a normal beach except, instead of nice, soft sand, it's covered in razor sharp shell fragments that dig into your feet.

The third result of the salt concentration is that it has allowed stromatolites to survive there. Stromatolites are probably the lowest form of life on this earth. They're made up of blue green algae that produces mushroom like shapes that grow up from algal mats. They breathe out oxygen and were responsible for creating the Earth's atmosphere in prehistoric times. They were thought to be extinct because they couldn't compete with more advanced forms of life, but there are a couple of places in Western Australia where they can be found.

One thing I did find to do in Monkey Mia, other than lie on the nice beach, was to go on a dugong spotting trip. A catamaran is used and can sail very close to them because the of the lack of engine noise. Dugongs are quite nervous creatures. The people who organise the trip guarantee your money back if you don't see a dugong. We actually saw about 15 of them as they swam south to the breeding grounds. Dugongs are supposed to be the truth behind the mermaid myth. Given that they have two huge nostrils on the front of their faces, you'd have to have been at sea a very long time to mistake one for a person.

After 4 days and another total failure to go diving, I was more than ready to leave Monkey Mia. At least the weather was better than in Perth. It was sunny three out of fours days and the temperature was about 25C. It really isn't surprising that most people only stay in the Shark Bay area for 1-2 days. I can't see this changing until there's more to do there. It probably wouldn't take that much. A dive shop in Denham would be a good start.

My next stop was Coral Bay, which unfortunately meant that I had to get the 4.45am shuttle bus to meet up with the northward bound Greyhound at the Overlander roadhouse.

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