Magnificent Monkey Mia

From Hamelin Pool, we headed up the Shark Bay peninsular towards Monkey Mia. There is no way we could fit Bertha at Monkey Mia itself, so it was a caravan park in Denham for us. The phone reception was so bad, that I could only ring to book when we were 5 minutes out of town – that’s the latest booking I’ve done so far! In the end we stayed up in the ‘overflow’ area and paid the usual extra money for the children. Which, upon reflection, meant that we paid $42 PER NIGHT for a patch of ground. No power, no water. Between us we had 4 showers in their facilities, so that’s a $21 shower each time! Hooley dooley.

They can charge so much, as they are basically the closest town to Monkey Mia, with its famous dolphins. Which we went to see the next day. We were there by 7.30am, which meant an early wake up for the children. There were 130 people at the early morning ‘experience’ and only 3 dolphins came to feed. I had visions of crowds of 20 dolphins or so, but that must have been in the ‘olden days’ when they fed the dolphins as much as they wanted. They found that this was causing the dolphins to neglect their young who couldn’t suckle in the shallows, so now each dolphin is fed a total of 3 or 4 fish 3 times a day.

There are volunteers with a bucket for each dolphin and they choose the lucky people who get to feed the dolphins. At the first feed, Angus was standing next to a cute young girl in a bright pink hoodie, so she was chosen rather than him! And Lexie dipped out too. We did meet a mother with 6 kids, 5 of whom were girls – so yippee a handful of girls for Lexie!

To cheer the children up, and to make up for a rushed departure in the early morning, we decided to take up the “buffet breakfast” option at the resort. Anyone would think we never feed our children! It was 10am by this stage, so we decided to have a two meal day – a big brunch and an early dinner. The children took the order to “fill up now as you’re not getting lunch” completely to heart and went back for seconds, thirds and fourths!

We checked out the information centre and started to watch a documentary on the dolphins when a volunteer came in to tell everyone that they were back for another feed. Better informed this time, I positioned the children no-where near anyone cuter or younger than them. I had them squarely in the middle of two volunteers, and together so it was obvious they would get 2-for-1 (you are permitted to bring another with you if you are chosen. Not many grown-ups do, though). I had each child looking at a different volunteer and THANK GOD, Angus was chosen. On the last fish too – phew!! They got to feed Puck her last fish for the day and they were completely rapt! I was not looking forward to the aftermath if they missed out a second time. There were only 62 people at the second ‘experience’ so they had better odds, but still with 3 dolphins a total of 12 people got a go. Apparently in peak season, there can be up to 700 people at a time. I am sooo glad we are not here in peak season. Though we are a little confused as we thought we WERE here in peak season. Oh well. Happy to be wrong.