really enjoyable. In 1970 a local Kalbarri man, Cliff Ross, started feeding the pelicans every morning with scraps after he'd cleaned his morning's catch of fish. He would do this about 8.45 am every morning before going to open his local shop. Soon the pelicans got used to this and started turning up every morning. If Cliff wasn't around they would cross the road to his shop to look for scraps, which was a bit of a traffic hazard. Eventually other local volunteers started feeding the pelicans too to keep them on the safe side the road, and now every morning, rain hail or shine, the pelicans are fed at 8.45 and up to 20 pelicans turn up looking for food. The pelicans are really big and friendly, though the noise their massive mouths make as their jaws snap together after catching a fish is a bit scary.After the feeding, we went back the cabin for a quick breakfast and to check out. Before starting out on the long drive to monkey mia, we made a detour to Red Bluff as it was a beautiful morning and there are fantastic views from here. We also stopped off at Hawk's head, another lookout in Kalbarri National Park. The view was beautiful as it was a much nicer day than yesterday with lovely blue skies but the most interesting thing we saw here was a group of some sort of caterpillars crossing
the path as we walked to the lookout. The were crossing the path in a line which looked like a length of thin rope but was actually about 50 caterpillars all travelling one after another, head to tail. They crossed the path and started to climb the earth on the other side all in a straight line....weird!By mid morning we were off on the long drive to Sharks Bay. For lunch we stopped off at Hamelin Pool for another barbecue and some ice cream. Here we saw more
stromatolites. These were much more impressive than the ones in Lake Thetis, and you can get a good view of them from an educational boardwalk over them. Here we learned that stromatolites are the earliest known form of life on earth, and that they produce oxygen through photosynthesis.They provided the early Earth with much of its oxygen atmosphere billions of years before plants appeared. without them, air breathing forms of life may not exist, including humans! In the afternoon we stopped off at Shell Beach and Eagle's Bluff. Shell Beach is another unique place -- the entire beach is made up of millions upon millions of tiny coquina shells and, at low tide, it is possible to walk a hundred metres into the bay all the time treading on a seemingly endless surface of shells. The shell build up is 8-9 m. deep. At Eagle's Bluff there's a scenic walkway which is supposed to be a great place for spotting marine life such as sharks, dugongs, turtles and dolphins. Not for us though -- the sea was clear but we spotted nothing. We stopped off an Denham to pick up some beer before finally arriving at Monkey Mia Dolphin Resort which we have booked into for the next two nights.
We had an early evening walk on the beach -- no sign of any dolphins -- and decided to eat in the bar before getting an early night as today has been a really long day and tomorrow we have to be up early for dolphin spotting. This wasn't as simple as it may seem as the electricity went off in the whole resort so the chefs weren't able to cook any food. We hadn't brought any food with us either so we almost had to drive into Denham for dinner -- luckily the electricity came on just on time and we avoided having to do that. I'm very excited about the dolphin feeding in the morning and we've also booked a "wildlife cruise".
