Thursday 20th September was another driving day. We didn’t leave Carnarvon until after 10am because I had to stock up on a few more grocery items and we got the kids started on some schoolwork before driving today. It was 325km to Denham, which was where we were going to stay. It is the most westerly town in WA (and therefore Australia) and seemed like a good place to base ourselves for a few days to see things around the Shark Bay area.

We drove straight through to the Overlander Roadhouse which was 200km from Carnarvon, and was the turnoff from the North-West Coastal Hwy onto Shark Bay Rd, which took you out onto the first peninsula. The area called Shark Bay is actually made up of 2 peninsulas and a number of islands on the most westerly part of WA. The whole area is World Heritage listed and there are a number of places of interest to visit, not just Monkey Mia. After a brief toilet stop and stretch of the legs at Overlander Roadhouse, we started the drive along Shark Bay Rd.

We decided to stop at the first tourist attraction, Hamelin Pool, which was only 25km along the road. The Hamelin Pool Marine Nature Reserve is the name of the bay area at the very south-eastern end of the first peninsula of Shark Bay. It is one of only 2 known places in the world with living examples of marine stromatolites. These dome-shaped structures are formed by tiny single-celled organisms called cyanobacteria that can tolerate the highly saline waters of Hamelin Pool. We parked in the visitor parking area and went to the store to find out about viewing the stromatolites. I was expecting we might have to pay to do the boardwalk, but we didn’t! It seemed a fairly casual setup as there weren’t many signs around telling you where to go. The lady at the shop showed us a map of where we could walk – either do a 20min walk to the boardwalk area, which included a lookout area and a shell quarry. Or you could drive closer to just do the boardwalk. We decided to do the longer walk. The shell quarry was quite interesting. The Shark Bay area has lots of tiny seashells growing in parts of it, and these were once quarried for building blocks to be used in buildings. We came to the boardwalk and walked along viewing the stromatolites – they looked a bit like cauliflower coral growing in the shallows of the bay.

It was then straight through to Denham where we checked in to the Shark Bay Caravan Park and set up. The ground in all the van parks is tiny shells mixed with sand. That evening I did a bit of reading up on Monkey Mia – the facilities there and how it all works. We planned to go there for a few hours tomorrow.