2006/06 Australia trip - Francois Peron Cape |
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Although we didn't need water, we gladly filled our nearly empty diesel tanks with the cheapest fuel we had seen in weeks. We had another couple of hours driving on the Coastal Highway through dry, flat country, with no towns, just signposts off to distant aborigine communities.
We turned off west towards the Shark Bay world heritage area, through a snazzy entrance way followed by a couple of hours of more desert, but this was a little more interesting as there were salt lakes, coastal-type bush, and occasional views of very blue sea. We were driving up the peninsula that includes Shark Bay, Monkey Mia, and the Francois Peron Cape national park. The area’s famous for its friendly dolphins and its dugongs, bilbies, and stromatolites. It’s also fast becoming a “resort”, a place to spend money.
The road in was very quiet, but the town of Denham seemed to be bustling. We stayed there long enough to find out that the national park probably had some campsites available and then we headed into the park as it was getting late.
The park is named after a French scientist who reported on the cape area 200 years ago. It was a sheep station for many years. All the campgrounds are at the end of 4wd tracks, and these are deeply rutted sand, so we didn’t know if we’d make it or not. The secret seems to be not to stop, and just keep the rig moving, 
but inevitably there are those awkward moments when you meet another vehicle and have to stop and back up to a passing spot. We made it to the Big Lagoon, a series of large shallow pools just off Shark Bay. The spot is beautiful,with pale limestone rocks and red sand, and very quiet, with no surf inside the bay. The only other campers were a Belgian couple from Gippsland in Victoria.
Saturday July 29th
A few people arrived the next morning, some to launch kayaks and others just to drive the road. Some were stuck for a while as
the camping area is deeply rutted sand, difficult even to walk in. Sandie wasn’t feeling very well so we decided just to stay where we were for the day. I set out to walk around the bay to some red cliffs, but, as so often happens, the shoreline is not what it appeared, and the lagoon is much larger than I had thought. I walked as far as I could on what I now knew was a peninsula and then around another part of the lagoon.
The lagoon was calm and clear and the day was getting very hot so I went for a swim. I was soon joined by a large, inquisitive fish, about my size. I retreated to the beach (only to get my camera of course!), but couldn’t get good pictures of the fish because of the reflections. It looked to be a cross between a shark and a ray, perhaps a large dogfish, what Brighton’s fishmongers used to call huss and the English chip shops a “rock salmon”.
I found a track that took me back over the hill to the campsite, and along the way found some deep burrows and a lot of small holes dug in the sand. I thought I’d found a bilby nest. Bilbies are small marsupials with big ears, little Dumbos about the size of a rabbit. They are so cute that Australians have an Easter Bilby rather than an Easter Bunny. As we didn’t see any, my bilby picture came from a rather faded warning sign. Predation by cats and dogs and competition with rabbits have just about finished them off in most of the country, but there are islands and places like this park where they still survive. I found out later that bilbies have about a dozen such holes that they dive into when threatened, so they are not really nests.
Clouds rolled in later in the afternoon, and the red hillsides seemed to glow in the softer light as the sun went down. The limestone rocks shone through the glow like bleached bones. This is a really beautiful and peaceful spot
Bilbies are nocturnal, so later that night I thought I’d go back to the bilby area, just to see if there was anything happening there. I was surprised that I found it again in the dark, but I probably made so much noise that the bilbies had time to move house. I sat there in the starlight for a while and heard lots of scurrying activity around me, but saw nothing.