It's a long way to Monkey Mia, but buffeted by a gusting westerly and
inured to time and distance, the extra 400 km to Denham, Monkey Mia, Hamelin
Pool and back on our day on the way to Geraldton from Exmouth was just
another number. We were crazed by the vastness of the land and challenged by
Tony R's passion for almost aimless long distance driving.
Hamelin Pool has stromatolites, of considerable intellectual appeal.
The birds between the carpark and pier were more visually interesting, but
nothing new; Inland, Slaty-backed and Slender-billed Thornbills,
White-Winged and Variegated Fairy-wrens,
White-browed Scrubwren (the stripe-chested race maculatus), Red-capped
Robin, Grey Fantail, White-browed Babbler, Singing Honeyeater, Chiming
Wedgebill, Welcome Swallow.
Monkey Mia's famous tame Striated Grasswrens hopped literally up to
our
toes, when we stopped in the carpark, out from under an adjacent shrub.
They seemed smaller and darker than those we'd seen, after hours of
searching, at the Lyndhurst site in South Australia two years previously.
The almost as famous tame dolphins, (a total of three, although more are
being recruited,
hopefully,) only appear every so often and this wasn't one of those days.
The
carpark shrubbery is irrigated and green, also held White-browed Babblers
and Scrubwrens, White-winged Fairy-wrens, Singing Honeyeaters.
CALM were busy with a new visitors centre on the beach, too busy to
tend what may have been a crow-trap, a wire aviary-type structure with
one-way entry on top, which held two Singing Honeyeaters, one freshly dead.
I let the other one out and wedged open the door, threw a branch over the
one-way entry.
Apart from Australia's most expensive and tasteless hamburger, and a
beautiful white beach and blue-water sea, there wasn't much else at Monkey
Mia. Denham, on the way in and out, was very attractive and inviting, but
our remorsless quest for new country and birds prevailed.
It was well into the night when we arrived in Geraldton.
Michael Hunter
Mulgoa Valley
50km west of Sydney Harbour Bridge
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