Fun with gentle giants on the west coast!

What a fantastic week we have had on this west coast.  Monkey Mia has long been a place I have wanted to visit and on Sunday 6th April, I got there!  It was great to see the dolphins so close up, frolicking with each other and coming right up to us for a feed. I can see why they have stopped people swimming with them, though, in this area, particularly after watching the silly boy trying to pull the sting rays at Hamelin Bay.  Later, we went out sailing and saw a dugong, turtle and more dolphins while electing to come back to shore in a net which was dragged behind the boat, for a bit of fun!  Great physio for the back.  It comes highly recommended!  That night I managed to reverse into the fence behind our site as I attempted to answer the phone while reversing the van.  The first I knew of it was when I looked up and saw Angie nearly breaking her hand as she furiously beat it against the van to get me to stop!  There's a lesson to be learnt there!  I can't multi-task and clearly should not have been trying to but the less said the better! Fortunately the damage to the post was minimal and no damage to the bike rack!  Before that happened, I dropped Angie at the PO and then watched an emu cross the main street and head into the pub for a lazy pint!  I even got a photo for you all!  

On Wednesday we signed up to swim with the whale sharks, a huge thing for Angie as she seldom swims and is even less competent in the water than I am – a Scot who only swims breast-stroke!  Anyway, she was marvellous.  She was swimming with the best of them and her enthusiasm, plus her helplessness increased greatly when she saw the handsome lad who was going to help her in the water!  She saw her whale shark and bought the video of her doing it, to remind herself of what she did, twenty years from now!  

It’s a very slick operation.  10 people are dropped into the water after the spotter plane has indicated where the whale shark is and they are led to it by the deckhand from the boat.  After they have swum for a few minutes they drop back.  Meanwhile the other 10 have been dropped from the boat and they are now in position to swim with the same whale shark.  No life-jackets are worn as they would slow you down!  

There were 4 whale sharks.  I saw three!  Missed the second as my snorkel kept filling up with water, saw the third but made a big mistake when I felt I was being selfish by swimming alongside it as others might not be able to see for me, so I tried going behind it to the other side.  Big mistake!   I was left for dead as the whale shark took off into the sunset leaving me in its wake.  The fourth was a different story.  I was with the deckhand who told me to swim in a particular direction which I did and came face to face with the whale shark.  What a sight and what a fright!  We had been told we mustn’t touch it.  We had to stay at least three metres away from it.  As this gentle giant came towards me I was sure I wasn’t going to be able to stop and we were going to collide.  I put the brakes on with arms and legs back pedalling, which was caught on video,  and fortunately didn’t touch it but I was well within the three metre limit! I was in the box seat to swim alongside it which I did for quite a few minutes.  It was magnificent.  

When Angie and I snorkelled we saw a couple of octopuses, fish of all colours, two turtles, a manta ray and on the way home on the boat, we saw another dugong.  The only thing that was less colourful than I expected was the coral.  It was mainly greyish brown with a few sections of green and blue and some red spots on the top. Apparently the reef on the west coast is mainly hard coral while the east coast reef is soft coral and hence the difference in colour.  I’ll need to google this as I don’t understand what that's all about!

We then went to Cape Range National Park to a campsite recommended by Pete Unwin and what a wonderful place it is-totally unspoilt, pristine waters. There are enough small sections of coral along the beach coastline for us to be able to go out snorkelling to enjoy the marine life in a very relaxed setting.  Angie has loved both swimming and snorkelling here -a real transformation.  She’s all set for new goals when she returns to Launceston.  Joining the Aquatic Centre is at the top of her list! We are both so relaxed we are almost comatose!  We’ve each managed to read two novels in the three days we’ve been here!

Angie is going to take over now.