Awake
nearly all night knowing the alarm will go off at around 5.50am, as I wanted to
get up and shower and get myself ready to head off to Monkey Mia this morning.
Lily was still asleep at 6.45am and we were all ready to go, wakey wakey Lily
time to get up. She awoke and lucky for us, she was in a good mood and had
breakfast and was ready by 7am. Lily later said to me,”Mum when I woke up and
you looked at me, you looked so beautiful”, wow that melted my heart for sure.
I know why she said that; I’d had a shower and brushed my hair.
We
were on the road and headed to Monkey Mia, and sun was shinning it was a beautiful
morning. They feed the dolphins 3 times in the morning and not always do they
appear. But they stop at 12pm, so if we get there early we should be able to catch
at least 1 maybe 2 feeds.
Well, the amount of people that were on the beach was around 60-70 and of course all had a camera, and the oldies don’t like to listen when told to step back. We saw the first lot come in and just swim around gracefully, and that was great but then we were told to get out of the water and they come up closer. Only about 5 people are chosen to feed 1 fish only to certain dolphins. No male dolphins are feed at Monkey Mia as they become too aggressive. The first feed went so quickly and was over, oh dear that was it. We will wait and go to the next feed so maybe we’ll do coffee and then go and see them again. Well we checked out the shop and I had said we’d come back to the shop and then within half an hour it was time for the 2nd feed. There wasn’t as many people but then became more popular as the next lot of visitors started to arrive. We knew how it worked this time and watched them come in and the dolphins, especially ‘Nicky” who was a pregnant dolphin at the age of 35 years. She previously had 8 other calves and 6 died and 1 disappeared so leaving ‘Finn” the only child of hers alive. Her calf is due November. ‘Nicky’s mother, Holyfin was 35 years old when she died and unfortunately due to a stingray barb through the heart.
Well, the amount of people that were on the beach was around 60-70 and of course all had a camera, and the oldies don’t like to listen when told to step back. We saw the first lot come in and just swim around gracefully, and that was great but then we were told to get out of the water and they come up closer. Only about 5 people are chosen to feed 1 fish only to certain dolphins. No male dolphins are feed at Monkey Mia as they become too aggressive. The first feed went so quickly and was over, oh dear that was it. We will wait and go to the next feed so maybe we’ll do coffee and then go and see them again. Well we checked out the shop and I had said we’d come back to the shop and then within half an hour it was time for the 2nd feed. There wasn’t as many people but then became more popular as the next lot of visitors started to arrive. We knew how it worked this time and watched them come in and the dolphins, especially ‘Nicky” who was a pregnant dolphin at the age of 35 years. She previously had 8 other calves and 6 died and 1 disappeared so leaving ‘Finn” the only child of hers alive. Her calf is due November. ‘Nicky’s mother, Holyfin was 35 years old when she died and unfortunately due to a stingray barb through the heart.
It
was so interesting hearing all about the families and how old they are. Life
span is around 40 years old, but there is a male dolphin, ‘Real Notch’ that is
42 years currently.
It
was time to all step out of the water while the handlers chose their feeders.
Mark said to me,” He’s going to choose Dylan, as he had his eyes on him”, I had
said” How do you know, there were about 50-60 people hear now”. Anyway all of a
sudden this handler picked Dylan, oh wow, go for it Dylan. He was rapt he got
to hand feed the Dolphin. Dylan had said,” They have such a hard suck on them,
when they take the fish”. It was so quick that we only got a few photos, but
did capture the moment. Dylan had said when we left home; I’m wearing a red
t-shirt so I stand out. I highly recommend this to have something that is
noticeable, as we think it worked. We still have a pass to go again tomorrow,
but we think after today we don’t need to go again. We didn’t want to spoil
that moment. We then went for coffee, sitting back on the couch on the beach
and guess what, the dolphins were playing and jumping in the distance. Oh what
a sight to see as you have your coffee. We went back to shop and picked up a
few souvenirs. When came back to camp for lunch before we were to go explore
some more by going to ‘Shell Beach and “Eagle Bluff’. I had to do washing we
were running out of clothes so did that before heading off.
Shell
beach is about 40 kilometres from Denham and is made up of millions of tiny cockleshells
that have been washing up on the beach for approximately 4000 years. You can
dig and dig in the shells only discover more and more shells. Collecting shells
is prohibited. It did not prevent a couple of well-placed messages on the
ground made up from the cockleshells. Dylan left a message for his class at
school and Hayley left a message from ‘The Traveling Garrett’s 2012’. Mark went
for a walk along the beach and counted 51 individual shovel nosed rays along
the beach.
On
the way to Eagle Bluff we saw an emu that appeared to have at least 7-8 baby
chicks ducking in and out of the scrub when we stopped to take a look.
Eagle
Bluff is about 20 kilometres from Denham and is set up high on the western side
of the peninsula and has a boardwalk built into the 300-foot cliff face. The boardwalk
gives a Birdseye view of sharks, rays, turtles and dugongs swimming along the
cliff face. We could see a dugong feeding on the weed beds, passing turtles and
rays as it made its way back and forth along the shoreline. On the way back to
the main road we stopped to watch a couple of Euros that seemed to watch us
also.
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| Dylan feeding 'Nicky' the Dolphin |
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| Dylan so happy he got chosen to feed 'Nicky' |
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| Nicky |
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| Shell Beach |
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| This is written in shells. |
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