Featured Image: Dolpins Snacks at Monkey Mia
We did the Monkey Mia “Dolphin Experience”. In the past, I’ve seen heaps of dolphins while surfing, yet it’s still intriguing to see them up close & interacting with us humans in the shallows. Up to 3 times a day between 7:45am & noon the Dolphins may or may not turn up to interact with people lined up on a reserved part of the beach at Monkey Mia. They are only fed a small amount of fish so as to keep their wild hunting instincts active. Sometimes they even turn up & don’t take the fish. The Dolphins pretty much run the show and will wallow about the shallows until a fish or two are presented by a randomly picked lucky tourist. Afterwards the Parks & Wildlife staff upend their fish buckets to show there are no more fish & the Dolphins just swim away. “What? No more fish? We’re outta here!”
Got any fish?
Here’s a clip of a Parks & Wildlife staff member feeding a fish to a random tourist only to have him pass it off to the nearest passing dolphin.
This has been going on since the 1960s, when a fisherman and his wife began feeding Bottlenose Dolphins some of their catch. As news of the dolphins coming inshore spread, visitors started to come to see them. The centre have a full history of all the visiting Dolphins with the genealogy going back over 50 years. They all have been given names. We were visited by Puck & Surprise.
In the afternoon we took a cruise to see more marine wild life. This produced a couple more dolphin, a blurry view of a turtle & a distant view of a dugong or two.
Dugong? Mermaid? We’ll never know.
We had a lovely afternoon on the water.
It started off pretty funny. We were just about to depart when a group of about 9 Chinese visitors, mostly well to do women, some young, some old, wandered along the wharf. As they were a bit late, one of the crew had already stowed the gangplank by pushing it to other end of the jetty. He graciously retrieved the plank & repeated the process so they could all negotiate the two foot gap between the jetty & boat. Once onboard, complete with all the latest fashion accessories, selfie sticks, D&G branded kit & Coco Chanel handbags, they immediately proceeded to start taking photos of themselves with everything in sight. The skipper, crew, bits of equipment, nothing seemed to escape. One of the Chinese guys, who spoke English (possibly their guide), mentioned that he never gets asked to have his photo taken. Jayne said, “Quick, take my photo with him…”, so I did.
This triggered some sort of social uproar & for the next 10 minutes the rest of the Chinese in the group lined up to have multiple photos taken with Jayne & myself. I’m still not sure of what the social norm is in this case but it was pretty funny. There also seemed to be a strict hierachy in the order of the process as each had their photo taken with us.
There’s sure to be dozens of these on a Chinese Faceplant site somewhere
The pewter plate still survives in an Amsterdam museum but the WA locals have since updated the local version as well as the post & it now reads…
Dirk was ere!
This Red Bluff Beach is not to be confused with the other Red Bluff on Quobba Station. It confused my TomTom satnav a few times.
The 2nd Dirk Hartog plaque, not as well known as the first, is also in this area. Dirk, although a dog lover, had a canine allergy. Hence the second plate. Again updated by the locals.
Gunna need a longer leash.
I may have made that bit up.
Jakes Point is the local break for the surfers amongst us. Yet another grinding left hander over reef.
Reef everywhere.
You know you’re out West when one of the locals says G’day as he trots past on his draft horse…
More than a couple of horsepower here
We’re not too happy about the weather turning a bit cooler. I’m starting to wear my thicker T-shirts now. Jayne has also had to use the air-con remote a couple of times in the morning to raise the temperature of the van to an acceptable level.
Probably only about one more stop before we end up at Perth. Bit scary really. Big city & all that.
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