Already on our way to Exmouth we visited one little part of Shark Bay – the Hamelin pool. It is famous for its stromatolites that are one of the oldest living ecosystems. So basically, piles of bacteria. Not very interesting looking to be honest. But the water here, as everywhere in Shark Bay, was beautifully turquoise and crystal clear.

On the way south we decided to go all the way to Monkey Mia (no monkeys there, by the way). On our way to Denham, the only town around, we went to see Shell Beach. As everything in Australia, it was called for what it is – a beach consisting only of tiny shells, mostly from single kind of cockle. As stromatolites, they can survive in the very salty shallow waters of the area. The water was indeed very shallow – Ville tried to go swimming, but after walking 20 meters it still didn’t reach his knees. In the end he had to lie down to get wet.

Initially we wanted to go to Francois Peron national park, but we found out that basically you need a 4WD to get anywhere around there. So we went to Monkey Mia to see its famous wild dolphins that come in the mornings to the shore to say hello and grab a fish. What we didn’t know was that apart from dolphins there would also be some cheeky pelicans, which turned out to be fun to see as well. After watching the dolphins we did an hour walk around the park. 

On that day we had been travelling for 2 months so we celebrated that with a good meal. We went to a restaurant that was also a sealife park. There we got to try local seafood and also kangaroo. After eating we headed of to our campsite for the night, Whalebone as it was called. The campsite was without any facilities so actually it was just a spot where we could place our tent. It was located next to a beach in the middle of nowhere. It was really windy during the day so we had to secure our tent anchors with big stones so they would hold the tent. During the night the wind calmed down, the sky was clear and the moon was so bright that it we didn’t need any torch light to see inside our tent.