2011-11-09 -- 13: Australia - Shark Bay and Coral Bay

Our route in Western Australia is from Perth in the south to Port Hedland in the north, were we are suppose to catch a flight towards New Zealand. In the meantime we plan to visit Shark Bay, a huge World Heritage area and stay in Coral Bay for a couple of days.

The road between Kalbarri and Shark Bay is not too exciting - not a lot of scenery, and not a turn in miles. It is easy to let the right foot be a bit heavy, and we got aware of it when we saw the blue light from the police car. Speed limits in Australia are strictly enforced, and there was no way to talk us out of this one. Speed ticket, and money gone that could be used for fun stuff instead.

Strictly following the speed limit we finally reached Shark Bay after a long and rather boring drive. We decided to stay in the main town Denham.

Shark Bay is really a beautiful area with amazing coastline and wild life.  One "must do" in Shark Bay is to visit Monkey Mia. It is a beautiful place with dolphins coming close to the beach, turtles and dugongs.

Shark Bay official page: Shark Bay

We decided to go sailing for a couple of hours, and joined a catamaran tour to see dugongs and maybe some other wildlife. It was a wonderful trip, and we enjoyed to get close to these strange animals that are close relatives to elephants.

We also enjoyed the stop at a pearl farm, where we  got to know a little bit more about pearls. 

We were lucky to see this turtle when we walked the jetty.

Another amazing place is Shell Beach - a beach that is totally made up by seashells.

From Shark Bay we had another full day of driving, to reach our next target - Coral Bay. We had heard that the beach and snorkling was amazing - and we were not disappointed! It was wonderful to just follow the current and observe what was  happening below.

During a drive along the coast we experienced the first live kangaroos - the kangaroos we met showed little sign of being afraid and just looked at us when we stopped the car a couple of meters from them.

We also saw some beautiful bush birds.

It was an easy decision to stay as long as we could, and take the final  leg of driving to Port Hedland in one go. The drive to Port Hedland was as expected very boring, and hot. We had at some time 47 C outside the car.

It is hard to understand that this dry desert like country can be flooded, but warnings are very clear and 2 meter high scales are alongside the road in many places.
















Some more pictures: Australia And NZ Part 2