Wooramel Station to Shark Bay

Days 60 – 62, Tuesday 10 to Thursday 12 August

After leaving Gnaraloo and briefly pausing at the HMAS Sydney monument ( lost with all hands – 685 Australians- after an engagement with the German raider Komoran in WW2) we headed south to Carnarvon ( again). Fuel , coffee and brunch were followed by a raid on some fresh food from the local supermarket and a visit to the truck wash to remove two months of outback dust from the Amarok. Turns out we did buy a white 4WD and not a pink / orange one 🤔. The inside of the car , however, remains a dust bowl… much like 0A when Mark served in the 1st Combat Engineer Regiment ( but nowhere near as smelly…)

It was then onto Wooramel Station , some 120 km south of Carnarvon , on the banks of the wide ( and currently dry) Wooramel River. A pleasant setting , but quite cold as a 20- 30 kmh East South East wind blew almost constantly during our stay.

We filled on our census form sitting in the VW on Tuesday night ( warmest place in town at that point …). Thursday morning it was onto Shark Bay , the traditional lands of the Malgana people, who called the area ‘Guttharaguda’, meaning ‘Two Bays’. Because the area comprises two bays …. We acknowledge the Malgana people as the traditional custodianship of Shark Bay and acknowledge their elders past, present and emerging.

Enroute we stopped at Wooramel Roadhouse ( best bacon and egg wrap on the trip thus far ) and Hamelin Pool to check out the Stromatolites. Except you couldn’t really see any Stromatolites as the boardwalk that enabled same had been destroyed in a cyclone a while back, and no apparently cares enough to prioritise fixing it. So you kind of stand on a Shelly beach and look a few hundred metres away to some black rock like things sticking out of the water in the bay. Like really lame rocks. Stromatolites are actually pretty cool, apparently responsible for creating earth’s oxygen over the 2,200 million years they were the dominant life form on the planet. Just don’t expect to see them well at a Shark Bay at the moment.

Thursday afternoon we set up camp at Monkey Mia in Shark Bay. Quick dip ( cold water) in the bay, followed by sundowners on the beach . A pod of dolphins turned up while we were watching …shows promise for tomorrow morning’s Dolphin interaction/ viewing.