Thursday, June 23, 2011

Denham

 

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Well i finally went fishing in Denham, twice, and yet again i managed to catch “zero” fish. I nearly got a squid off the pier but it slipped my jig and then spent the night swimming up and down the jetty teasing me and everyone else. my only consolation is that only two squid for the night were landed on the jetty we were on. The other jetty was “going off” with some nice sized squid being caught it seems. The second fishing outing was of the sand outside of Denham. Again, we were not the only ones on the beach and we were not the only ones to go empty handed. We had Belinda’s children with us and Shaye was fortunate to land a small flathead that had to be returned. Alexis also had fun trying her hand at fishing.

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On the Sunday we spent some of the morning relaxing and catching up on washing before going for a drive out of town to shell beach and some of the lookouts along the way

Shell Beach was nice, and would be a great place in summer to come out and swim. The bay looked very inviting. The beach is comprised of millions and millions of small shells from the Cardiid Cockle which over the centuries has compacted. it is apparently many meters deep and there is a commercial mining operation here that mines the beach to create shell grit.

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On the way back from Shell beach we pulled into some of the free camp locations. One, Whalebone, looked particularly inviting and had quite a few people there already. When we were leaving Denham it was packed.

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On Monday we went out to the Blue Lagoon Pearl farm. We were taken out on a big catamaran and we had a talk given to us by Rob. The talk went through the whole process of farming Pearls as well as the many different types of Pearls they market. Some of them looks very nice. We also had the opportunity to have a look around their operation. Of course there was also a shop onsite so the girls bought some pearl shell pendants. The actual Pearls were a bit to expensive for them though Smile 

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That concluded our stay in Denham, with the only other attraction of the area that we wanted to visit, the Stromatolites, on the way out of town. We visited them on the way to Kalbarri. It was here that we also found the Shell brick quarry, where they used to mine the bricks for many of the regions older buildings.

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We would like to thank Steve and Rhonda for their hospitality during our stay in Denham, we had a great time there and they also managed to organise some fantastic weather for us Smile

I’ll leave you all with some final photos, one of which is the only “Live” Gecko Sara has found on this trip, and a sunset shot. Our next post will be of Kalbarri.

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Saturday, June 18, 2011

Geraldton and Denham

We only spent an overnight stay in Geraldton, at the Sunset Beach caravan park. This park was quite nice and i spoilt the girls by lashing out for an ensuite site Smile.

The caravan park is right on the beach as can be seen in our previous post so we all had a great night sleep, away from any major roads (and road trains), to the sound of the waves on the beach.

When we got up in the morning, Caitlyn, Dad and i went for a walk on the beach but as it was high tide, there was not much beach. I was suppose to get up at 4:30am to look at the eclipse but as i was having such a good sleep, that did not happen.

We had a few things to do before we could head on up to Denham. Steve and Rhonda had called through a shopping list so with our caravans off of the ensuite sites and parked in caravan storage we headed off in to town to visit the HMAS Sydney memorial and the local Woolworths.

The Shrine was quite good and once reading the stories on the wall or remembrance it was clear why they had used seagulls in the dome.

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Caitlyn was quite fond of the Lady here looking out over the sea and spent quite a bit of time holding her hand

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Once we returned to the caravan park to pick up the vans we were on our way. It was an easy trip up to the Overlander roadhouse, where we had to ring ahead to Denham to order our escort into town.

Steve and Rhonda came out to meet us on the road and take us through town to their place. Denham seems to be a nice seaside village and it takes all of 2 mins to cruise the main street from roundabout to roundabout Smile

We had a nice catch up on the first night, and we are sleeping inside Smile so this was a very quiet night. We also spent most of the first day here in Denham relaxing and cleaning. Once we had had enough of this we went down to the main street for a walk.

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We then took the drive out to the Ocean Park where we were able to see fish and shark feeding.

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We had a nice barbeque with  everyone, including Belinda and Guy before heading off to bead for our second night here. We had an early wake up to look forward to as we were heading off to Monkey Mia to see the Dolphin Feeding.

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When we got out to Monkey Mia it was to find a good crowd already gathering. There is a range of accommodation available out there from back packers and caravan sites through to hotel rooms and chalets. It did not take long before the dolphins arrived and we got some great photos before the guides allowed everyone down to the water. They then talked about the dolphins, monkey mia’s history and the feeding process before asking everyone to exit the water again for the feeding to begin.

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We happened to be in luck today as Caitlyn got picked to feed with the very last fish in the guides bucket.

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With the feeding over we went up to the cafe for a light brunch before we booked on to the Shotover catamaran for a sail in the bay looking for Dolphins, Turtles and Dugong. We did not see any Dugong but we did find everything else and had a great 2.5hrs out on a nice sunny, calm day.

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With the sail over we had lunch before heading home. just as we were leaving monkey mia a small turtle decided to visit and swim around the jetty.

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Our last destination for today was the Peron Homestead where they have a small museum and a great artesian fed hot tub.

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There was a lot in this update, feel free to ask questions via the comments if i have glossed over anything to fast Smile