Up early, (6.30 am) for a salt water shower in Coral Bay. Such is the scarcity of water that drinking water is very severely rationed (spring loaded taps) with dire warnings about misusing drinking water for anything else other than drinking. Loos, showers, washing up (etc) all takes places in semi desalinated water. Coral Bay prides itself in being self sufficient by using renewable energy (solar and wind) to power these processes.
The kids played a trick on Liz in the shower by getting dressed then pretending to be in bed when she shouted at them to get move on!
As we were on an unpowered site, we used the camp kitchen for breakfast - so we could give the lap top a quick charge, then hit the road towards Monkey Mia / Shark Bay our next destination 585 km down the track.
First stop was the Tropic of Capricorn for a photo stop (about 30 km south of Coral Bay).
Next stop was the Manilya Roadhouse. Just a grotty petrol station and cafe on the Great Coastal Highway, but one forever ingrained in our memory as the place where, 20 years ago, we waited 6 hours for a greyhound bus north after leaving Coral Bay last time.
We were a bunch of 6 backpackers then, and according to the diary we kept then, we waited at the roadhouse from 6pm (ie after dark) when we got off the bus going to the main road from Coral Bay to 12.40am when we got on the Greyhound bus going north. Being stingy backpackers we recall not spending one single cent over that time - to the annoyance of the roadhouse owner!. Instead we waited at the forecourt and Liz taught Jim to juggle!
So we had to call in at the roadhouse for
* a photo
*a quick juggle (to prove we could still do it)
* to spend some money to make up for our meanness last time. Jim promised the kids a bar of chocolate and immediately regretted it. It was over 3 dollars (nearly 2 pounds for 1 chunky kit kat - perhaps 60p in the UK. We also bought a fridge magnet! We didn't fill up with petrol though!
Then it was on with the journey south, next stop Canarvon to fill up with cheaper petrol and visit Woolworth's supermarket where we bought 3 loaves of special offer bread at 1 dollar per loaf as opposed to the 4 dollars (best part of 3 pounds!) for a loaf of plastic white sliced bread that we bought in Exmouth and again in Coral Bay.
Carnarvon was nothing to write home about (we thought that last time we visited too!) - although its the fruit growing centre of WA - we saw fields of banana plantations, tomatoes etc (we bought some tomatoes from a self serve stall at the side of the road). there was a massive flood in WA last year which wiped out a lot of banana crop - evidence of the flood still exists, and bananas are still 14 dollars a kilo (say 10 pounds a kilo) even in Canarvon! The other point of interest was a massive satellite dish commissioned in time to track the first Apollo moon landing and used to track Hayley's comet as well as bring the first live TV from abroad into Australia.
Then it was onto another roadhouse for fuel and a roadside stop for lunch - where (for the first time) we were irritated by flies (one of our previous memories from 20 years ago of the Kalbarri region (and we are only 300km north of this region now) was the abundance of flies - so perhaps this is a worrying sign.
We turned off the main road for our trip into the Shark Bay World Heritage area (there seem to be so many World Heritage sites in WA, we wondered if someone from their tourist board was on commission!).
Monkey Mia is 205km up the track - the road is almost entirely straight for about 200 of these 205 Km - and stretches out for miles in front of us. The Romans would have been impressed! There are plenty of little detours - but these are for tomorrow as we were racing to get to Monkey Mia before dark where we had been promised an unpowered site would be available at the campsite (part of a posher resort complex - the Monkey Mia Dolphin Resort). We arrived in at 4.30pm ish, not before we nearly ran over an Echidna. It immediately curled itself up into a ball (as a hedgehog does) and we were therefore concerned it would squashed by the next car, so we got a brush out of the van and pushed it off the road!.
Just arrived at Monkey Mia in time to have a quick explore of the resort before tea, blog, diary and bed.
Tomorrow we plan to see the dolphins which come into Monkey Mia to be fed around 7.30 am (under strict scientific condition to keep the tourists (like us) flocking whilst maintaining their wild state. Apparently only females are fed, feeding times are random to stop dependence and they are only fed one quarter of their required daily diet needs so they still need to hunt naturally).
Joseph is most interested in swimming in the rather posh looking resort pool, the girls in jumping into the hot tub.
After seeing the dolphins the plans are for a leisurely drive back along our 205km diversion from the highway, calling in on shell beach, and other points of interest. We then plan to do a free overnight camp on the road about 80 km short of Kalbarri so won't have Internet reception to update the blog tomorrow.
The plan for the day after is an early start, Kalbarri for the day, then drive onto Geraldon where we have been promised a driveway to sleep in (ie no rip off campsite fees) for 2 nights - then Perth on Friday.
As for the weather today, long sleeves at breakfast, then short sleeves for the rest of the day - positively hot over lunch (28 degrees I would estimate) (as we competed with flies), but cooled off in the evening so long sleeves back on.
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