It was a freezing cole night and we wake to find lots of cndensation on the inside of the van roof. It’s remarkable how radically the weather has changed since we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn just south of Coral Bay. There was a big storm around the Perth area last Thursday which brought power lines down and left 85,000 homes without electricity and it seems to have affected the weather system right up the coast. We are hoping that it is a short cold snap and normal services will be resumed shortly! But in the meantime we are taking no chances and have bought a couple of cheap fleece rugs-cum-blankets for extra warmth at night.
Despite the increasing cold at night, today is a gloriously sunny, although chilly, start to the day, with clear blue skies. A welcome change after several predominantly cloudy days. It’s a good da for a bit of sight-seeing and Ocean Park Natural Marine Exhibition makes for an interesting stop a few kilometres outside Denham. Here there are several types of live sharks in an open topped tank – tiger sharks, lemon sharks and reef sharks – along with two huge cod, which don’t get eaten by the sharks so long as the latter are fed regularly! There are several other tanks with a variety of tropical and temperate fish, shovel nose rays and sing rays, turtles, sea snakes, the incredibly well-camouflaged rock fish, snappers, crayfish emperors and much more.
Further round the coast lies Shell Bay with it’s wonderfully white beach that has been created naturally from hundreds of millions (and more) Fragum cockles which grow in profusion in L’Haridon Bight and are washed up in the bay in such proliferation to create a 120km beach thought to be up to 4000 years old. Compacted shell has been quarried for building blocks and used as building blocks although now only for renovation purposes. Loose shells, not surprisingly as a renewable resource, ard continue to be mined commercial for paths and driveways