Shark Bay, Western Australia
We visit the very lame and very popular Monkey Mia dolphins, the very silly Peron National Park visitor center, then come back into town and do laundry in the rain. Such an exciting day.
I also wonder: the very artificial dolphin experience at Monkey Mia is totally dependent on rangers feeding the dolphins. Funny--I don't see rangers feeding the bears in Yellowstone for the benefit of the tourists. It's a bit bothersome.
Today was an exercise in lameness. It starts with our 'luxury self-contained villa' that we've rented for $85 a night. If your idea of luxury is a converted concrete block garage with mice scurrying around the floor, well, then this is the place for you. It does have two bedrooms, and sleeps six, but it's got all the ambience of a self-storage unit, even down to the single light bulb in the ceiling.
The owners are cheap, too: the TV isn't even on a stand, but sits on the full-sized refrigerator, the stove/oven combo unit has markings in Fahrenheit, a scale not used in Australia since the late 1960's. Dining chairs are $9 plastic resin patio chairs, and the 'couch' is a cheap metal futon frame. What got Chris was that the air conditioning unit is attached to one of those 'slide the plastic room key dongle into the slot to turn it on' switches... and to make sure you don't take the keys off the huge dongle, the owners have attached the keys with a padlock. The best, though, is the sign that says "No refunds for early departures!" We'd be out of this charmless place tonight if it weren't for that.
Monkey Mia Dolphin Magic
After breakfast, we drove over to Monkey Mia. This is run by the state conservation-and-parks-and-logging agency, CALM, and to be honest, we're expecting a lot of tubby women dragging their hubbies along looking for Dolphin Magic... and if we're lucky, a sprinkling of New Agers to make fun of as well. And, oh, are we disappointed. After paying our $6 per adult entry fee (apparently the 'CALM All Parks Annual Pass' is not quite All-inclusive), we wander over to the year-old visitor center... a neat building with architecture that ends up being the highlight of the day.
There, at the visitor center, we read all about Dolphin Magic. We read that the Dolphin Magic started in the mid-1970's when a female dolphin named 'Crinklefin' or somesuch started hanging around looking for handouts that the fishermen would throw at it. Then we read about how Crinklefin bred and taught its offspring to also beg for food scraps, until a manta ray stuck its barb in Crinklefin's heart, killing it in 1995. Oh, the horror!
And we also learned that those insightful fishermen figured they could market this as a tourist opportunity in the mid 1980's with appropriate New Age mystical images as the place to experience Dolphin Magic, and that they could lure unsophisticated suburbanites to the area for a Chance to Interact With Nature in a Wild Setting. And, of course, they could build the Monkey Mia Resort, where they could charge tourists through the nose for Dolphin Magic.
Now that CALM is in the picture, though, it's a bit different. Dolphins are only fed between 8am and 1pm, and only a maximum of three times a day. There's no schedule either. You just sit and wait... a CALM ranger will scope the water with binoculars, and if a dolphin's around, they might grab the bucket and go feed it. Many days, dolphins don't show up, and other days, only one or two may appear. Only seven dolphins regularly show up, and often individual dolphins will disappear for weeks. It's all very hit and miss.
We were there at 11, and there was no dolphin magic for us. The ranger was busy sweeping the steps, and about every ten minutes she'd grab the binoculars and look out, then go back to sweeping the steps. There were a dozen people on the beach in front of the visitor center, and another dozen milling about. Not more than fifty meters away just off the beach, was the Monkey Mia Resort restaurant, with outside tables where a few dozen more tourists sipped down their very expensive cappuccinos as they waited for Dolphin Magic to happen right in front of their eyes. It was all very pathetic, somehow.
After figuring out that this wasn't Sea World, and the dolphins don't perform on schedule ("they are wild animals" warns the signs, which makes the Dolphin Magic all the more precious, I think), we decided it was time to get the fridge magnets and go somewhere interesting.
Monkey Mia dolphins were just lame. I don't know how CALM justifiably puts on this spectacle, to be honest. I don't see rangers feeding the bears in Yellowstone for the benefit of the tourists. It's just all bothersome. Francois Peron National Park
Now this is more interesting. The tip of the peninsula, formerly a pastoral station, was converted into a Natioanl Park in 1995. Since the peninsula is connected to the mainland by a small isthmus only 3 kilometers wide, it makes it a good place to introduce rare and endangered species, as long as you keep the feral goats, cats, foxes, and rabbits out. And CALM aims to do that with a program called Project Eden, by first constructing a vermin proof barrier across the neck of the isthmus, then baiting and killing all the other feral animals. The fence is up, most of the ferals have been eliminated, and CALM have been doing introductions of animals for the past couple of years. It's interesting.
The Peron visitor center, though, is not. It commits the gravest sin of all in a National Park Visitor Center: it uses poetry in the displays. Yikes! Not only is it soppy, but it's just bad policy. Chris rightfully points out "How many non-English speakers know that 'a glistening orb' really refers to oyster pearls'? There's a few stuffed animals, a mirror with the words "The Fifth Feral Animal: YOU" on it (to induce appropriate guilt, no doubt), but there's nothing on the plant life in the park, which I'm interested in, and there isn't even a map of the park. The Francois Peron Visitor Center is like nothing more than a junior high school science project.
Back to Denham
So we save the drive through the park for tomorrow, and head back to Denham to do laundry and some shopping for our CALM expedition. We find a fairly decent newsagents for magazines, and while we're out, it starts to rain on us! This is our first rain since Port Douglas, on the other side of the country! Unfortunately, our laundry is on the line, so we have to run to get it off then stuff it in the laundromat's dryer down the street. Oh well.
And we spend the rest of the afternoon reading and just relaxing. In the evening, Chris headed off to read, while I watched "Da Ali G Show" on the ABC. I was greatly amused, especially the sketch where Ali G is talking to someone from Britain's drug agency... he asks the agent "So what is da chemical in Ecstasy that makes people enjoy house music?". Snicker.
Weird Wildlife Sighting
Not dolphins. They're performers, not wildlife.