It seemed quite a long drive to Monkey Mia on Friday. The scenery was more beautiful than I remembered, but perhaps the amazing cloudscapes helped. It was raining heavily at first, we just managed to get out of the car for photos at the sign between showers. But, later, the showers were more intermittent and our arrival in Denham coincided with sunshine. It is certainly very pretty indeed.

We fuelled up before driving the last 25kms or so to Monkey Mia. At the entrance you pay for access to the park, this is in addition to our previous payment for the accommodation. We have about a $20 discount for the accommodation due to RAC membership. At $54 per night with the discount it is very reasonable for a tourist hot spot. We paid about the same at the Coral Coast Caravan Park in Carnarvon, plus the cost of the ensuite there, another $20 per night.

Our pitch here is a long way from the main buildings and we are getting plenty of exercise walking to and fro. Of course, we got up early enough to get to the Dolphin Experience at 7.45 a.m. yesterday morning. There was quite a long wait for the dolphins to arrive, but eventually they swam close.

Then they were off chasing fish in another part of the bay. Stephen had the patience to wait and eventually they came back for the feeding. I saw this happen, but had defected to get a coffee, so was further away. Fortunately my camera has a long lens. The staff doing the feeding often got in the way of shots, so didn’t get very much.

We have a second chance tomorrow morning before we leave. 

We had quite a storm, with strong winds, last night, but this morning was sunny and the water was completely calm, so I think we were very fortunate. The wind came up again by late morning and it’s cloudy, with some very light showers.

I’ve done two loads of washing, one last night of our towels and other linen, drying it in the dryer, and one this morning and hanging the clothes both inside and outside the van. It always causes me anxiety, will I manage to get a machine, then will I manage to get a dryer.

We had lunch at the restaurant, the only one, at Monkey Mia. We shared a toastie, followed by hot drinks and a slice of chocolate mud cake. I ordered an Aporal Spritz, delicious, and we shared that as well.

In the afternoon Stephen spent time in the Dolphin interpretive centre whilst I had a rest.

We had a light dinner of hard boiled eggs and salad.

This morning (Sunday) we had to be packed up by 10.00 a.m. So, we worked steadily to get ready to leave by about 9.30 a.m. so that we could try to see the dolphins again. We were very fortunate. They had not been in to shore earlier, whilst we were busy, but came after we had waited with everyone else for about 45mins. We stood on the jetty instead of on the sand and it gave us a really good view of the whole process. Very satisfying.

One female dolphin hung around for quite a whilst the guide was giving us information. The guide spoke very kindly to her and my impression was that she was very attached to this person, perhaps because of her manner. I have some video that better illustrates the relationship, but it needs processing and I will post later, or perhaps when we get home.

Afterwards we had hot drinks and shared a muffin before going on one of the local walks to a lookout.

We set off for Denham where we wanted to do some shopping to cover the next few days. After the shopping we parked with a view of the bay and had lunch.

I had booked a camp site in one of the bays on the road out to the Highway. It turned out to be not the best choice, and we are not actually in the sloping campsite we booked, but on the road. However, we checked and this road appears to be purely for our campsite and we have relaxed and settled into this place.

We have much better views from this position as well.

This evening we had a long chat with Matt who appears to be quite happy.