A Long Dugong Day

We are up but have basically nothing to do until 1pm when we hope to go on the postponed Catamaran Wildlife Experience. We are fast becoming under the impression that 'Experience' and 'Project' are the in words for Australians, last year....... The wind has dropped so as we have breakfast looking at every wave on the ocean so as to ensure they are smaller than yesterday's, we start thinking positively. Still bored so go watch the Dolphin Experience again, only from the naughty boys stair on the jetty...... The Australian girls whiney voice is fast becoming irritating so I go back to the van and wait for the cleaner to finish in the toilet block, first in, result.......

Pack up van and comply with jobsworths instructions of vacating site by 10am, park up outside and walk back in to site........ You can only drink so much Coffee, Tea and Pepsi Max, so off we go on the Monkey Mia Nature Trail walk, first stop the Bird Hide over looking a watering hole. We read the information board which makes this hide sound just the place to kill half hour when you have nothing to do, but wait, Terrific. Two minutes later we are back on the trail, the hide has no real seats, just upturned logs to sit on and the watering hole is just a depression in the ground, not a drop of water, not a bird, not an emu, not a thorny devil ( thank god the t came out then, otherwise God knows what you would be thinking ) in sight. Carry on walking on the dark red sand, in sports sandals and feet start to burn and burn a bit more........ With absolutely nothing but tracks to look at we go back to the camp site and collapse in the bar/restaurant and apart from lunch of flathead and chips, we drink more Pepsi Max and watch as the sea becomes rougher and rougher, the palm trees start bending, the Australian version of the wooden spoon with a number on it, starts being blown off tables, waiters are chasing napkins across the lawn and one gets a round of applause when he manages successfully to carry a cocktail with cream etc above the rim of the glass walking sideways to a Liverpudlian female out the front, using his body as a shield from the wind....

We walk over to the Catamaran and Yes we are going, so on board we get and go a different way to the others, we go to the rear under a sail shade and they go up front. We set off and within 5 minutes are having to scrunch up as the folks up front that do not like getting wet, want to share our space........

We are 6/7 kms out on the sandbanks and sea grass fields when we see what we came to see our very first Dugong, but there are two of them together which is unusual as they are solitary and very shy creatures, but hey, we are happy and smiling..... Over the next hour or so we see more Dugong's, Turtles, Dolphins and Sea Snakes whilst enjoying an afternoons sailing in the wind. When we get back, even the skipper has a smile on his face and says "That was fun".

So now it's 4pm, little lady sea legs is feeling fine but we have nowhere booked to stay tonight and I want to get a few hundred K under my belt due to also wanting to reach Fremantle (600kms) tomorrow. So we set off and drive until just before sunset and pull into a free camping spot on the side of the road. We have never done this before but it looks okay, there are a couple of other caravans/campers here already. Of course we don't get power at these sites, so it's our first real taste of basic camping, now if you screw you eyes shut tight, what you can see on the this side of you eyelids is brighter than what we can see outside at the moment....... We know there are people out there but cannot see them, we know there are animals out there but cannot see them, we know there are creepy crawlers that can climb into the van out there but cannot see them. Hence the delay in publishing this post, it's really difficult when you are standing up in the sealed shower unit we have on the van, wrapped up inside the quilt cover with a can of fly spray at the ready.....