Day 100 01/07/2011 Carnarvon – Eagle Bluff (near Denham WA)

Day 100 01/07/2011 Carnarvon – Eagle Bluff (near Denham WA)

This morning we headed off to complete the Gascoyne Food Trail.  This trail took us past local growers who had market stalls as well as a fresh seafood market.  We had a great time driving from farm to farm selecting fresh vegetables and unbelievably bananas for $5 per kilo!! We even indulged and bought the ingredients for seafood marinara for dinner, yummy snapper and prawns as well as muscles and octopus…yum.



Stromatolite's



Prior to leaving Carnarvon we stopped at one final market and got ourselves a frozen mango or strawberry chocolate coated ice cream.  Awesome for me there is nothing better than a slab of mango frozen and then coated in chocolate … the kids enjoyed their crushed strawberries coated in chocolate.  There was silence in the car for ages.

We were headed into the Monkey Mia area but unsure where we would stop for the night.  The first option was Hamelin Pool.  Hamelin Pool is famous for being a part of the Shark bay World Heritage Area as well as being a Marine and Nature Reserve.  In Hamelin Pool you will find the world’s oldest and largest living fossils dotting the shores in rocky clumps. 



This was our view for pre dinner drinks - and the campsite
was free!!



Stromatolites are colonies of micro-organisms that resemble the oldest and simplest forms of life found on earth from around 2.5 billion years ago.  The stromatolites grow in Hamelin Pool because of the extreme salinity of the water, the occurrence of calcium bicarbonate and the limited circulation of the water.  So that we could maximise our experience and viewing of the stromatolites there was a 200m boardwalk that took visitors out over the environmentally sensitive area where the stromatolites could be viewed from above.  The kids found the information board helpful in understanding the importance of stromatolites. We decided though that we would skip a night at the Hamelin Pool Caravan Park and headed off to a free camp at Eagle Bluff.

Eagle Bluff besides being a free camp has a boardwalk perched high above Shark Bay that provided us with uninterrupted views across Shark bay to Useless Loop.  The boardwalk also offers the possibility of observing sharks and rays in the water below.  We searched hard this afternoon but didn’t see any.



As the sun sets in the west



Once we set up camp for the night, and found a great spot for the thunderbox (no toilets at this free camp) Pete and I settled back to enjoy a pre dinner drink whilst the kids went crazy digging in the sand dunes.  After travelling for most of the day they made the most of the late afternoon light and ran around like children possessed.  Because we were the only people in the camp spot it didn’t matter how much noise they made!!  The view for our drinks was awesome and we were able to watch the storm move slowly across the bay, straight towards us.  Just on dark we headed indoors before we got wet.

The seafood marinara for dinner was scrumptious and was accompanied by a delicious bottle of wine.  A glorious and picturesque camp spot, possibly the prettiest we have been in so far on the trip and best of all it’s free!!

It’s hard to believe that we have now been travelling for 100 days!! So far so good!!

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