WHALE WATCHING
2nd October Left Exmouth today and headed to Carnarvon, having spent a full week in this picturesque area. The town is full of holiday makers (lots of families as this was the first week of WA school holidays as well as backpackers) and, with the Ningaloo Reef being just off the coast, scuba diving and snorkelling are favourite pastimes here. By far the most fantastic experience during the week was a 4 hour whale watching tour which took us way off the coast for a wonderful day of ‘up close & personal encounters’ with literally hundreds of humpback whales. These mammals travel to the warm waters off the Kimberley coast to calve and mate and are now almost ready to commence their journey south to the colder waters of the Antarctic.
A dominant feature of the landscape at Exmouth are the 13 transmitter towers of the Naval Communication Station. These form the world’s largest very low frequency transmitter (VLF) with the central tower, known as Tower Zero, standing 387.6 metres high and weighing 800 tonnes. It is the 2nd tallest structure in the southern hemisphere and can withstand winds up to 500km per hour.
Having travelled 350km south we arrived in Carnarvon (not to be mistaken with Carnarvon on QLD) another seaside town. Carnarvon is the commercial centre for the rich Gascoyne district. A feature of the town is the luxurious plantations of bananas and other tropical fruits along with numerous vegetables all grown with the aid of water pumped out of the sand of the Gascoyne River. The plantations extend for 16km along the banks of the Gascoyne River.
The town boasts one of the longest jetties in WA. Carnarvon was the first port in the world which loaded live stock on board ships for transport to markets. The one mile long jetty once boasted an animal race the length of the jetty along which the sheep were driven from holding yards nearby. These days the precinct houses a museum and historical information as well as WA’s first Shearing Hall of Fame (which cannot be compared with the one in Hay NSW – they are just not in the same league).
An interesting piece of trivia is that Sir Charles Kingsford Smith once conducted a garage business here and started the Gascoyne Transport Co – thought to be WA’s first transport company.
We also took a 70km drive to the north to the Quobba blowholes, a natural phenomenon and an amazing sight to see. Powerful ocean swells force water through sea caves and up out of narrow holes in the rocks and jets of water erupt into the air, sometimes to a height of 20 metres, creating a spectacular sight.
5th October
About half way down the west Australian coast and still 830 km above Perth.
Arrived in Denham, a beautiful coastal holiday town and Monkey Mia only 27km across the other side of the peninsula. Today (7th) we have been to see the dolphins which have been coming into the shore to be fed since the 1960’s. We were surprised to find that there are actually only a dozen dolphins which they feed although others do come into the shore and play. Patting or touching of the dolphins is no longer permitted and they are only fed a quarter of their daily food requirement (2 or 3 fish at each feeding) and only 3 feedings a day. The rangers select people from the crowd to be allowed to offer a fish to one of the dolphins and I was lucky enough to be selected although, due to the size of my bum, an excellent photo opportunity was missed (to quote Rossco).
