[Continued from Part 4a. I had to split this post into two parts.]
Thu 19 Aug
So what’s the main draw of Monkey Mia? Dolphins! Being fed! For free! Just about every morning in the last 20-30 years, they’ve fed dolphins at the beach by the resort. Every morning there are between one and three feedings, and currently there are only five specific Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins that are fed, though many more often show up. Lots of people showed up too, but the dolphins don’t always cooperate to give every person a good photo-op — sometimes the dolphins get a bit aggressive and block the progress of the guides as they walk down the line. Anyway, each dolphin gets fed a few fish by volunteers picked out of the crowd, but those fish comprise only a small percentage of their daily diet.
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Before we left Monkey Mia I made sure to go for a swim in the Indian Ocean too! From the photos it may look like it was warm, but it really wasn’t. 60 degrees, maybe? Now the Arctic Ocean is the only ocean in the world in which I haven’t gone for a swim (Gulf of Mexico/Atlantic in 1994, Pacific in 2004, Southern in 2004, Indian in 2010), though I don’t anticipate I’ll be checking that one off my list. Ever.
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We left Monkey Mia after the dolphin feeding, and took our time seeing a bunch of neat places along Shark Bay Road in the Shark Bay World Heritage Area.
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A bit further down the road was Shell Beach. It may look like it’s a white sand beach, but it’s actually made up of millions upon millions of tiny white shells.
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Our next stop was Hamelin Pool, which has a shell block quarry, but is primarily known for being one of the only places on earth that’s home to stromatolites. Evolutionists claim they’re some of the oldest organisms on earth, and hypothesize that our atmosphere’s oxygen originated from them. Whether or not that’s true, stromatolites are still pretty interesting, even though they can’t exactly be described as dynamic.
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On our way back down the North West Coastal Highway we had to stop for petrol at the Billabong Roadhouse, because, after all, there wasn’t another road for 140 km, much less another petrol station. In rural Australia there are occasionally roadhouses on the major roads, which consist of some petrol pumps, a restaurant, and maybe a few rooms.
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We made it back to the town of Kalbarri, where we stayed at another hostel, just in time to catch the sunset at Red Bluff Beach.
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Fri 20 Aug
My final full day in Australia was a good one. First we drove up to Meanarra Hill, overlooking Kalbarri National Park and the town of Kalbarri.
Then we went back to the city, and after I stocked up on Tim Tams for the flight home, we checked out Chinamans Point in Kalbarri, at the mouth of the Murchison River:
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Here’s Red Bluff Beach. And when we were atop Red Bluff, we started seeing several humpback whales well off the coast:
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From there we continued south along the Kalbarri Coastal Cliffs, to places like Pot Alley, Shellhouse, Grandstand, Island Rock, and Natural Bridge. I thought Pot Alley was the most spectacular place I visited on this entire trip to Australia. I could’ve spent all day hanging out there!
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So after having seen 20-some whales from Kalbarri Cliffs, it was pushing 1:30pm, and we needed to get moving south. One of our few, quick stops was at the Hutt Lagoon, which is a pink lake. It’s pink because it has very high concentrations of beta carotene, the same thing that makes carrots orange. So very odd.
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We had to keep pressing hard in order to make it to Nambung National Park, to see The Pinnacles. The Pinnacles are a collection of thousands of stone pillars standing in a small part of a desert. They’re very strange, but very cool. I had hoped that we could make it there at least a half hour before sunset, but we only made it pretty much right at sunset.
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After it got too dark to see anything at The Pinnacles, we still had close to a 3-hour drive to get back to Perth. Eventually Bob remarked, “Oh hey, I see other cars now. We must be in Perth.” So true. Anyway, I dropped off Bob at his apartment in Subiaco, said farewell, and then drove to the airport to drop off the rental car. As I was getting out, I noticed Bob’s camera between the driver’s seat and driver’s door. Without a phone to call Bob and without enough time to drive back to Subiaco anyway, I decided to bring the camera with me and mail it back once I returned to State College. I suppose I could’ve left it with a lost & found desk at Hertz or something, but I didn’t think of that until after I got on the plane.
Sat 21 Aug
I had to go through security and collect my luggage three times on the trip, because my itinerary, though it was all booked with Qantas, had me on three different airlines: JetStar from Perth to Melbourne (1am), Qantas from Melbourne to L.A. (10am), American from L.A. to Washington Dulles (9am). Annoying.
Also annoying: being stuck in a middle seat on the trans-Pacific flight yet again, and only being able to get maybe an hour of sleep total.
Also annoying: LAX. Worst. Airport. Ever. No signs in way-overcrowded check-in areas. Broken escalators. Ridiculously long security lines. Only 10 gates and 1 restaurant per terminal. No, I don’t feel like going to Chili’s at 8:30am, even if it’s the only option.
Relatively pleasant: the gate agent at LAX giving me an exit row seat, after seeing I started my day in Perth. The flight attendant was also quite nice when she found out I’d started in Perth, and asked if she could fill up my water bottle and whatnot. The guy next to me had started the day in Darwin, returning from a business trip, so we were both in the same boat.
I met up with Tracy in LAX (she’d arrived from New Zealand), and we drove my car back up to State College after we landed at Dulles. I even stayed awake the whole time behind the wheel, despite completing a ridiculously stretch of travel with almost no sleep. Unfortunately I could only sleep for 5 hours that night when I got back to State College. Go figure. So from leaving Kalbarri around 8am until arriving in State College the “next” day at 11pm, I traveled for about 52 hours straight, with hardly any sleep!
I miss Australia already again. It was a great and memorable trip, with a ton of stuff fit in to just a few days. It’d be a challenge to keep up the same pace for another week or two though! I have no idea when I’ll be back, but I would like to go back again someday.