Thursday 10th March
Well it has taken a few days but we have finally got over the fact that I almost killed us all in a car crash! Although its going to take some time for our bodies to get used to the fact and both Pauline and I are still hobbling around like old aged pensioners.
Tyler seems totally immune to it all and still thinks that it was great fun to be flying through the air in a beaten up Toyota Hiace, he keeps telling people that he was in zero gravity and how cool it was.
As a special treat for almost dying I upgraded us to a shack in the caravan park and it had a wonderful thing called "air conditioning" which should have allowed us to get the first solid nights sleep for weeks if we hadn't both just laid awake replaying the accident over and again.
After what felt like a few minutes sleep it was time to check out and discover the marvels of Canarvon whilst we waited for the hospital report (They let us keep all of Pauline's x-rays, which I am sure is not totally above board but is way cool!).
Unfortunately the advice that we had received about Canarvon turned out to be correct, there is absolutely bugger all to do in the town, we figured we would go to the cinema but upon checking the listings it turns out that its only open twice a week and appeared to be playing films that had been made 20 years ago.
After several hours of driving around or scrutinising every single item on the shelf of the local supermarket we finally managed to grab our hospital report and headed out as quickly (but safely) as possible.
You cant help but wonder if the locals create pot holes on purpose just to give themselves something to do and to ensure that they get a steady flow of tourists dropping in from time to time.
Originally we had planned to stay at a place called Eagles Bluff which has a raised platform overlooking the sea where you can simply look down and gaze upon the plethora of sharks, rays and other exciting marine life coming into the shallows.
When we finally got there however the place had signs everywhere telling us that we couldn't camp or we would receive a hefty fine so instead we just took the opportunity to saunter out to the viewing deck and try to catch a glimpse of jaws.
I am not sure how anyone has ever seen anything there, it was so windy that you couldn't keep your head in the same position for more than a couple of seconds without it being violently thrust to one side which meant that anything that could have been in the water acquired a heavily blurred look to it.
There could have been all sorts down there for all I know but when you are desperately trying not to get swept over the side by gale force winds you tend to have more pressing matters on your mind that identifying species of fish.
So, with our heads hung low, partly to protect them and partly due to feeling gutted that we had driven a hell of a long way to be blown away by sharks and instead almost got blown into sharks, we called it a night and decided to drive straight through to Monkey Mia.
I am so glad that we did, we were just driving out of Denham when we suddenly saw something move on the crest of the hill and it wasn't until we drove past that we manage to identify what it was.
Right in the middle of the road, looking a little mythed as to why a slightly broken looking white box on wheels was circling it and making excited noises and flashes, was a big blackish brown snake.
Since coming to Oz I have become absolutely fascinated with them and much to Paulines chagrin Tyler and I have brought a couple of books to identify any that we see and work out if they could kill us or not.
After taking dozens of photos we moved on again, only to see yet another snake slithering along the side of the road, slightly smaller but no less exciting as it shot past us with incredible speed.
Two seconds later we saw yet another one, unfortunately this one was dead but it was huge and probably didn't mind me circling it in my broken looking white box on wheels making excited noises and taking dozens of photos.
By this time you can imagine how it felt to be Pauline, not only was she still in a world of pain from the crash, she didn't sleep a wink the night before and now she knows that our next destination is literally surrounded by snakes.
That night I slept better than I have ever slept as I knew full well that Pauline would be up all night listening for hissing noises and guarding the van.
Monkey Mia is famous for its dolphins who are abundant along the shores of the resort and although they are still wild many have become so used to human interaction that they are now reliant on them as a source of food.
When we arrived we headed straight down to the beach and straight into a pack of dolphins, merrily swimming along the shore front minding their own business.
One moment there were three of them and then a few seconds later there was a weird looking one that had popped up alongside them.
Yep, sure enough Tyler had immediately jumped in and started to swim with them, totally unfazed as though it was the most natural thing in the world, one things for sure, I am going to need to keep a closer eye on him if we do go swimming with the great whites!
The following morning there were hundreds of people gathered on the beach in an attempt to watch someone feed the dolphins, to me it all looked too forced and the dolphins may as well have been in the zoo as they were literally surrounded by tourists.
As there is such an abundance of marine life here we decided to book ourselves onto a boat tour to see if we could see some of the larger species up close and personal, the trip that we finally decided on was cancelled for the day as the boat was broken so we decided to extend our stay and relax a little.
That evening we tried our hand at fishing again, we had picked up a reel, a float, a hook, some bread and a moldy melon, which I believe constitutes everything you could ever possibly need to catch everything you could possibly catch.
Tyler was really excited and we waddled down to the jetty, fully expecting to nail ourselves a whopper, we even sat triumphantly amongst the professional looking fisherman with their "rods" and other silly gizmo's.
We stuck our bucket on the floor retrieved our hook, shoved a piece of bread onto the end and then launched it gracefully through the air into the beautiful turquoise water beneath.
The bread instantly fell off, so we tried again and again and again until I struck onto the idea of using a moldy piece of melon to wedge it onto the end and for a minute we thought we had cracked it, the hook sunk to the floor, the float bobbed and Tyler wandered off to go swimming.
I sat there for ages watching that damn float bob about on top of the water until finally I got bored and pulled it in only to discover that there was nothing on the end of the line after all, some greedy little dinner fodder had gone and grabbed it ages ago.
Obviously because I looked so dejected the lady next to me gave me a big bag of bait that she had finished with, which basically consisted of a load of little fish that I could easily have told Tyler I had caught.
Unfortunately pride now got the better of me so instead of doing the sensible thing and lying through my teeth to my 8 year old son as per usual, I decided instead to try and snag myself a monster.
Well I can assure you that fishing is all down to the bait, its incredible how much the fish loved this stuff, no sooner had I loaded it onto the hook than they promptly devoured it.
I went through 6 fish in a matter of seconds and you could actually sit and watch the fish demolish every last bit of it from the hook, I swear I even saw one of them use the hook as a tooth pick.
I had basically become a glorified fish feeder providing an al a carte meal to them on silver service, in fact it must have been so good that in no time at all they had told their friends and a huge group of fish swam around my feet taunting me.
I finally gave up and started heading back to shore just in time to hear "Shark" and my heart sunk, ohh my god Tyler's in the water, it was a scene right out of jaws only this time "Brody" had a little more weight around his stomach and a bucket half full of moldy melon and dead sardines.
Luckily for me but unluckily for the Shark it was actually shouted by a fisherman who had just caught it, admittedly he had used a rod so had a distinct advantage but sure enough when I reached his pitch he was proudly holding a reef shark.
I quickly took a picture of them as I figured that I could probably super impose my face onto his later and immortalise my fishing prowess forever, as an added bonus he was in better shape than me too!
The following morning we headed out onto the boat for our cruise around the shark bay, we saw a few dugongs and turtles but by far the highlight of the day was our visit to Dirk Hartog Island.
The island itself is an uninhabited wildlife sanctuary and our boat was the first that had been there for a few days which meant that it was absolutely teeming with life everywhere.
I was fortunate enough to be the first to swim over into the bay and found myself literally surrounded by reef sharks and shovel nosed rays, some of which were far bigger than me, it was absolutely incredible.
We spent about an hour snorkeling around before it was time to head back to the boat and sail back to shore.
On the way back one of the staff happened to mention the prevalence of tiger sharks in the area of late which once again would have been useful information to have about an hour and a half ago, before we had naively jumped into the water completely oblivious.
Still, we all had the limbs that we had started off the day with so I guess its all good!
From here we headed down to Geraldton and as we needed to get the van serviced we decided that we may as well stay for a few days.
Geraldton is a pleasant enough town with some lovely quaint streets and a cinema that actually shows films from our decade on a daily basis, it also had traffic lights which caught me totally off guard when I saw them as its the first place we have been that's been big enough since Darwin.
I checked the car in and had a five minute chat with the mechanics which basically provided me with a very thorough description of everything that there is to do locally, which basically equates to absolutely nothing at all.
This is how we found ourselves at 09:00 the next day queuing up outside a grayish metallic building on the grounds of Geraldton Port eagerly awaiting to be admitted into the Geraldton Lobster Factory!
Did you know that when you keep lobsters packed at a certain temperature they can sleep for days on end, which means that lobster from Australia can still be alive and kicking when they reach the tanks of restaurants in China, no, well now you do!
See this is an informative blog after all!
Other than that I found the tour and the facility very cruel, they process 180,000 lobsters there at a time which is an incredible amount and I am amazed that this can be sustainable, I longed to pick up the little boxes and set them all free!
In the immortal words of Forrest Gump, "Well, that's about all I have to say about that!"
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