4th October

From our Hill top overnight stop, we headed for the Shark Bay World Heritage area and Monkey Mia.

It was a 128km trip in from the main road so you would hope it was worth the 250km round trip.
On the way in you have the Stromatolites  and the shell quarries to have a look at.

The Stromatolites are an ancient form of life and only found in a few places around the world and this is one of them.

                                A bit hard to read but click on the photo and it makes it bigger.

               Funny looking things but they were the reason we have Oxygen in the atmosphere.

                                       An interesting place to visit and well worth a stop.

                         This is the Board walk used to get out to where the little critters are.

From here we headed towards Denham and stopped off at Shell Beach, which as the name implies is a beach of Shells,as far as the eye can see.

                                    Click on the photo to enlarge it so you can read the script.
These are the shell in question that make up the beach and are spread over most car parks in the area.

 Just down the beach there is a quarry where they are allowed to take the Shells for industrial purposes,such as surfaces for car parks etc and just in view in this photo, is the Pest fence they have stretched across the peninsula to keep the Feral pests out so the local Native Animals and plants can regenerate.

We carried on towards Denham but as the Day was drawing to a close, decided to stop the night at a lookout point about 30km short of Denham, as we were a day ahead of ourselves and were not booked in to the Van park until the next day.

We had a commanding view over the Sea and another Beach of shells. We walked down the Beach for miles and enjoyed the exercise.

This gives you an idea of the size of the shells on the Beaches around the area.

We had Tea and watched the Sun set in the Sea and one of the locals made an appearance.

  All was going well we thought. We had checked for no camping signs, but found none so thought we were OK. That was until the Ranger came along and quite rudely told us, "you cant camp here,its a Heritage area", you will have to go into Denham,Bugger! So a trip in the Dark to Denham, conscious of all the wildlife just waiting to rush out in front of us. The people at the Park put us in the overflow area until morning which was a relief as with the school Holidays in full swing we weren't sure of getting a spot.
Thats all for now. Next Denham and Monkey Mia
Cheers Dave and Helen