Day 56: Denham Rest day 1

September 13, 2022

It was a very comfortable night in Denham and we set off just after 7 to get to Monkey Mia. It is pronounced Myer which is the Malgana word for place. It’s unclear where the monkey came from.

It’s basically just a caravan park and a beach where they sometimes feed dolphins and you have to pay $15 to get in. There’s also a walking track but it is currently closed.

Apparently you used to be able to swim with and feed the dolphins however you liked but then they decided that that was not good for the dolphins. So now they only feed a few certain dolphins a little bit up to three times a day and only if the dolphins come in and roll over and “initiate the experience”. There were dolphins swimming around but they didn’t come into the “experience area” for about half an hour. I went to get a coffee and called a freight company from Carnarvon who say they can deliver my tyre to Denham tomorrow. When I came back, the dolphins had come in for feeding.

Dad took a good photo of two dolphins and a hanger on pelican that ate a third of the fish

We went to watch a video where they follow the dolphin family that they feed and have amazing footage. Then I got a call from the Dirk Hartog Island tour we’d booked for tomorrow, who said that it would be too windy tomorrow but we could go today, although there were no spots on the 4wd tour. So we hustled back to Denham and down to the jetty.

There were 11 other people on the boat and the crossing took about an hour. The boat pulled up in homestead bay, where there’s an eco lodge and bar and camping sites and we got ferried into the beach in a dinghy for coffee and cake.

The Homestead Bay was a nice place to enjoy a coffee

There is still the shearing sheds there although the island started to be destocked from the late 1960s when a Perth businessman bought the island as a retirement home. His grandson is the one who built the eco lodge and tourist venture. The island became a national park in 2007, except the ecolodge, with money from Chevron as offset for destroying Barrow Island.

We had a delicious lunch of bread and salad and meat/felafel. There was one seat in the back of a 4wd so I jumped in and went across to the western side of the island, leaving Mum and Dad to wander around the eastern side.

There was also a blowhole which was rumbling but only sometimes exhaling a little bit of spray as it was relatively calm.

The salt spray creates basically a desert

We went down to Surf Point in the south and saw heaps more sharks

And admired the rock formations looking across the Steep Point

We went out for a bit under two hours and only covered the bottom quarter of the island, it’s another 75k to Cape Inscription at the top where Dirk Hartog left a plate in 1616.

They’ve made a very scenic precinct near the bar including a windmill head

They also make gin with the plants from the island so I got a pink gin, made with Dampier Rose, to enjoy on the beach. The wind was coming up, and it was a bit of an adventure getting the grey nomads from the dinghy onto the boat in the rising swell. It was a bit rough on the way back but we made it to get the washing off the line safely.

Storm clouds came over the bay in Denham

So we had a great day if not what we expected in the morning and now have another day in Denham tomorrow.

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