Coral Bay - Denham (ATA Day 8)

On the road early enough this morning as we had a lot of driving to do to get us from Coral Bay to Denham.

We passed through Carnarvon where Ben spent a few minutes trying to locate a place that sold chocolate covered bananas that he'd been to before – he couldn't find it now. He got back on the bus at the petrol station we eventually pulled in at and asked if anyone fancied driving because he was tired and cranky. Tempting...might have been nice to get some driving practise in in advance of being let loose on the Great Ocean road but since I doubt my licence covers me driving a bus I just had a giggle as he shuffled back to the driver seat.

After a long time on the road we pulled in and stopped at the entrance to Shark Bay World Heritage Centre for a photo op. I was more interested in the road sign across the way that indicated Useless Loop was 163km away from us. I had to find out what it was and why in hell it was signposted....so asked Ben. The Loop is a route that was followed by two maritime 'geniuses' way back when...their boat was grounded at Denham so they set out on foot in search of fresh water. They walked for a few days until they came to a point where they looked out over the sea and saw their ship grounded in Henri Freycinet Harbour and realised they'd looped the coast. Idiots!

From there we moved on to Hamelin Pool Nature Reserve to see the Stromatolites (I had never heard of them before and so knew nothing about them in advance). These are living organisms that effectively look like black rocks on the sea shore. The area is protected by having a boardwalk erected to take you out over the Stromatolites into the breaking sea so you can view them at various stages of life...from blossoming (growing up to 1cm a year) to dead because they've been in the heat of the sun for so long and the shoreline has receded starving them of the water they so badly need. In high tide it's sometimes possible to see bubbles of air coming from them but we didn't have that pleasure.

The final stop was Shell Beach where instead of sand there are banks of cockle shells that have been forming in the area for more than 4000 years. Cockle shells thrive in very salty water (as is present here). The shells are constantly being washed ashore and over time are being compacted into banks of shell that are now up to 10 metres above the sea level in parts. Walking to the water we had to go over ridges of shells that were like giant sized strawberry drills. The water was pretty warm but there wasn't really any chance of swimming there because it was so shallow. I went walking out to sea to see how far I could go before the water got up to my knees. I lost interest much before this happened. Within a foot of the shore the water was ankle deep...another couple of feet in it was maybe 3 inches above ankle height and it remained that way for a couple of hundred metres out to sea. I walked out until the people sitting on the beach were specks on the horizon but the water never reached knee height!

Back in the bus we journeyed on to Denham where we stayed the night in the smelliest room I think I've ever slept in. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like I was going to be sick and seriously considered moving to the sitting room area of the apartment thing we were in (but was too tired and lazy to move). We reckon someone either puked all over the room and it wasn't cleaned properly or someone is buried under the floor in there...it was like decaying feet...euwwwww!