Who's the Monkey Mia?

The Dolphins have been fed here at Monkey Mia for many years, beginning with fisherman sharing scraps in the 1950s. It got a bit out of hand. Fed Dolphins were not good parents and were forgetting how to hunt and feed themselves. There was a risk that we were killing them with kindness - that the population would decline.

It's a very regulated affair now. WA Department of Parks and Wildlife line visitors up on the beach and jetty like boot camp, lecture us about the evils of over provisioning and then choose the lucky few to toss a fish into the toothy maw of the just 5 dolphins that are being fed. It is a crowd experience, a set piece and not for me.

By contrast last evening, when there were no buckets of fish about, Dolphins came in close to the beach and thrilled the handful of us watching the sunset. Yes they were probably looking for a handout, but it was up close and personal. It was terrific.

And behind us stood a resort that exists only because those Dolphins started getting fed fifty years ago . So I find myself very ambivalent about it all. I like to see Dolphins up close, I don't want the crowded lecture and I want the Dolphins to live happily ever after too!

So I guess the solution is somewhere close to where they've landed.....the feeding is regulated, the population is monitored, the crowd gets educated and the sunset admirers obtain random, close encounters of a cetacean kind!

Fish of WA....a post by Hugh.

As we drove into Exmouth on a fine sunny day we decided to stop in the Exmouth tackle world for some advice. We were talking to one of the guys who worked there and he was saying where we should go but he finished with saying" but, it's Exmouth, there are fish everywhere" boy was he right!

The fishing in Exmouth in fact the fishing all up the coast has been nothing but plentiful. We have caught upwards of twenty five fish species on this trip. These consist of:

- parrotfish 

- Estaury Cod

- Gold-spot Cod

- Black Bream

- Flathead

- Spotted Javelin

- Yellowfin Bream

- Mulloway

- Spotted Grunter

- Surf Parrot Fish

- Painted Sweet lip

- Spangled Emperor

- Mangrove Jack

- Breaksea Cod

- Darktail Snapper

- Moses Snapper

- Stripey Snapper

- Blue Spotted Tusk Fish

- Western Butterfish

- Tailor

- Yellowtail Barracuda

- Giant Trevally

- Western King Wrasse

- Bump Nose Trevally

And some other unidentified fish.

Now some suggestions from my dad in what to say...

The biggest fish was caught by him that was the painted sweet lip. We also ate this fish but it wasn't as good to eat as my estuary cod that I caught. ( But don't tell him that)

The two fish I mentioned above were the only two kept besides a bream that was stolen by a pelican. The rest of the fish were released and lived to see another day ( I think).

The most fish was caught by me. The number that I caught at least doubled that of my dads.

Now for some photos

37 cm Mangrove Jack

One of twelve Jewfish caught on the day.

An unidentified but stunning reef fish.

Dads big fish the sweet lip.

A modest sized Spangled Emperor.

Oh so many fish!

We have fished from the shore in pretty much every spot we've stopped for the night. And we have caught fish every time. This is so unlike the east...here the fish are on the bite all the time, everywhere. Today Hugh and I caught bream and reef fish on the low tide in just 20 cm of water over reef.

Hugh has caught his first mangrove Jack times two and a host of other new species. And I've caught the biggest fish so far....gloat....a sweet lip we feasted on tonight.

And the bait is so cheap here .....perhaps half the east coast prices!

Some photos.......

Cruising through Carnarvon

 The west Australian coast north of Perth is a very long, very thinly populated stretch. It reminds of the Northern Territory, where the roads are long, the people spread thin and the distances between places and things are long. In other words, remote northern Australia.

So why does it remind me so much of cruising the Mediterranean?

Because we are cruising north, a day or so in each place, just as in a cruise. And just as in cruising, our visits are short, our experience compressed, our perspective day long. We form our views quickly because we have to...and places get classified as good, bad or indifferent. 

So here is Carnarvon in a day.

It's pretty unprepossessing.

The steak sandwich at the pub is incomparable.

It's still recovering from the cyclone in March...lots of flattened fences and damaged roofs. We are so distant from this that I had to google the cyclone...

There are fish everywhere...in two short sessions, Hugh and I caught 10 jewfish, a large flathead, 3 bream and a flag tail something.

The sunset was magnificent.

The local kids are characters....to his mate, hovering over the crab pot...'just pull the prick up'.

There you go.....the ship leaves tomorrow for Exmouth.

Kalbarri Gorge National Park

Just half an hour's drive east of the coastal town of Kalbarri, the Gorge National Park beckons. Here, the Murchison River has carved dramatic, wildly layered and coloured channels through the ancient sandstone plateau. And I do mean ancient. These are 400 million year old sediments. So from a time when nothing had yet crawled out of the primordial ooze, when aquatic invertebrates ruled. We saw fossil tracks of a monster arthropod. It looked like a trail bike track!

The gorge has stunning views, unique vegetation and few visitors...we meet and greet the odd party, but pretty much have it to ourselves. And the weather is warm and still, perhaps mid 20s, a little different from the 50 plus days of summer here, which I can confidently say, without ever experiencing them, are to be avoided at all costs!

What's the collective noun for Pelicans?

What is the collective noun for Pelicans? Pod, apparently, or better, scoop. But if you're Hugh on the beach at Kalbarri and you've just caught a bream and six of these feathered pterodactyls are coming for you, recurved cavernous beaks agape and hissing like Cobras and flapping jumbo wings, well, freakingterrifying it is.

And so it was today.

Heading west!

We've arrived in Sydney for dinner with Marc and Ellen. Tomorrow we put Cait on the plane to New York for a month...nerve wracking for all concerned! We cross the airport to fly to Perth, arriving in the afternoon. First stop is a birthday dinner with Matt and Sam, then we head north. We have hopes of fine sights, food, wine, fishing and birds.....we will see!