Day 55: cheat side trip to Denham

September 11, 2022

I went for an early morning walk and saw a crimson chat and enjoyed the lake.

The lake was full of water birds going about their business

Having successfully navigated the swan, we packed up some things including my bike into a spare room at Hamelin and headed off towards Denham in a very speedy contraption. We stopped first at Shell Bay, further around Hamelin Pool.

It’s still very salty so I wanted to go for a swim and float easily. Dad gave up when you had to walk out in cold shin deep water for at least 50m to get to waist deep cold water to float but I persevered. It was fun to float but potentially not worth the effort.

We stopped at a scenic lookout and watched some sharks frolic in the shallow water below us

Then we stopped at Eagle Bluff, overlooking Eagle Island and watched stingrays in the water

A little further up we stopped at the Ocean Park Aquarium but didn’t pay $28 to go in, just enjoyed lunch on their very nice deck before finally heading into Denham.

Dad has booked us a two bedroom flat just behind the esplanade. Denham is old compared to Exmouth and Coral Bay, having been built for pearling and sheep stations in the late 19th century. Apparently they used to boil the oysters to get the shells on the seafront which must have smelt horrific. It’s a definite holiday town now. The beach isn’t that nice, just a small strip of seaweedy sand but the water is still an amazing blue colour. Mum and I went for a walk to the supermarket. I borrowed a book from the Hamelin book exchange, a week in December, by Sebastian Faulks so spent the afternoon reading that. It makes me feel very happy not to be in London in December.

We went down to the beach to watch the sunset.

I didn’t take great photos as I got distracted by a guy on a Surly Long Haul Trucker

I thought he might be the mysterious middle cycle tourist but he wasn’t, he is a teacher in Denham who has a Surly and is planning an overseas touring trip next year. We talked about how great Surlys are for a little while.

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