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Sunday, October 31, 2010

A few quiet, boring days at Peron Peninsula

After our trials and tribulations of Point Quobba, we arrived here to some more wind, but things have changed a bit and it isn't as windy and we are expecting a few quieter days.

Yesterday we headed over to Monkey Mia to see the dolphins being fed. Our family was extremely lucky as there were 8 people (out of about 100) chosen for the first feeding session, and Banjo was chosen. We took our time so much afterwards that we were there for the second feeding of the day. This time was much nicer as there were only about 30 people and this time, Moses got his chance. There are photos and videos on posts below.
We then set off for a viewing afternoon at Eagles Bluff which had a lovely boardwalk, but very little in the water below. This was a little disappointing as we had hoped to see a range of stingrays, sharks and hopefully a dugong. We decided to leave our disappointment behind and headed to the Ocean Park Aquarium, aout 15 kms south of Denham. We had a great time watching smallish sharks being fed, and some gorgeous little turtles that were being nursed back to health before being set free back to the wild. As we approached the "nasties" tank, our kids quickly identified each of the dangerous marine life in the tank - lion fish (Ruby has now seen two in the wild!), puffer fish, box puffer fish, and then we were treated to be able to see a true stone fish. It really was weird. We also saw some of the reef fish we had seen snorkelling so it was nice to ask the very knowledgeable young people working there what each one was. They were equally impressed by our kids' knowledge about the various fish and eels and other things in the tank and were very friendly.
We came away thinking we had had quite a good day, and then tried our luck in a small lagoon with the fishing rods until just on dark. We have photos of quite possibly the smallest fish ever caught! Never mind, a lovely dinner of soup was whipped up by Ruby.

Today we set off to the Peron National Park with hopes of seeing a dugong. After our experience from yesterday we weren't overly confident, but there are supposed to be between 11,000 and 14,000 living in Shark Bay so we drove off in hope. We weren't disappointed.

We probably saw 10 dugongs in total. But where we saw them was filled with other life in the ocean. Skipjack Point Lookout was a fantastic viewing platform and the wind had dropped markedly so we could see almost everything. The list included the dugongs, mantarays, cowtail rays, sharks, turtles, dolphins and schools of different fish. The kids were very excited, and were buzzing as they went to bed tonight with the excitement.

It is experiences like this that we will remember, and we are very thankful that we have this time together as a family.

WFs

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