We left Denham yesterday and headed towards Carnarvon. On the way we stopped off at a few interesting places. The first stop was Shell Beach, the way the bay is there are constantly little cockel shells washing up on the beach. They use these shells for making bricks and putting in chicken feed to harden their shells. The next stop was the Stromalites. Stromalites are the result of cynobacteria developing and forming rocks and/or cow pat shape sponges. This is a very rare phenomenon in the world, purely because the water is so salty. Salty water means no predators. Scientists use the stromalites to prove that the earth has held life for 4.5 billion years (the cynobacteria are responsible for generating enough oxygen in the atmosphere for sustainable life enable other oxygen producing plants to develop and make the atmosphere what it is today. In Bill Bryson’s book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, he discusses this exact location in great detail. David read this book last year so it was neat to get to see the stromalites in Shark Bay.
We went on a tour around where a telegraph station used to be. This station used to be in charge of broadcasting telecommunication signals from Perth to the mid and North-West. We stopped at a couple roadhouses along the way, for little breaks before arriving in Carnavon in late afternoon. We booked ourselves in the last free spot in a caravan park and settled in with wonderful neighbours. One of our neighbours, Gib came over to us and asked us if we would like a coffee so we said yes and that ended up with us chatting to him the whole night showing us some home brew beer and port that his friends have made. He is a love spoon maker, which is a welsh thing and his wife is from Assinaboia, Saskatchewan. I love when I meet Saskatchewan people over here. It is very rare.
This morning we went to the town to check out the touristy things to do. We walked out on the Mile Long Jetty and ran into our other neighbours from the caravan site. They were a couple from Tasmania and also very friendly. We chatted with them about travels and exchanged good places to head to and then they offered us a place to stay at their house with the opportunity for me to teach at the school that she works at (she is in charge of finding relief people at the school in their town).
Carnarvon is known for their mangoes and bananas. They have a lot of fresh fruit and veggies but mostly those. It is banana season right now so we see bananas all over the trees. Today we went to a couple plantations and spoiled ourselves with some fresh fruit and veggies to each over the next few days. Tomorrow we will head off to a little spot north of carnarvon where there is free camping and apparently a beautiful spot for snorkelling and spotting humpback whales.
Time to enjoy the rest of our beautiful day in the company of our “Grey Nomad” pals.
Holly and David.
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