Australia is big, Almost in the Canadian way of big. We flew 3 hours from Cairns to Sydney, then five hours to get to Perth. FIVE HOURS – on a domestic flight! This seems almost impossible, but as Dame Edna Everage once proclaimed: “ah yes, Perth! A mere six hours from anywhere else!”
From the relatively mild mannered maritime climate of Sydney we had plunged into the hot and humid tropics in Cairns, and now we flew into well, what can only be described as the oven. We are informed that the weather for our time in Western Australia was exceptional, and I should hope so. 45 degrees is no joke! But whereas Cairns is so humid that its mere 32 degrees felt oppressive, WA is so dry that you can, just about, stand the heat.
We drove 850 kilometres which I think I am right in saying is our daily record, so far, under our own steam. The roads are fantastic, bringing new meaning to the by now well-worn phrase Long Straight Road. Road Trains, over 36 metres of lorry and containers, plough up and down these incredible highways, not stopping for anyone or anything, just rolling on and on through the hours and the heat. We were stunned by the scenery only ½ an hour out of Perth. This was the outback! Red and orange soil, flat lands punctuated by scrubby looking bushes (hey, maybe that’s where they got the idea for the name ‘bush’ then), endless blue skies and warning signs for ‘roos.
I have to own up now. No, we did not see a single wild roo. Not in our three states exploration of Australia. Yes, we saw some wallabies, or wallaroos as our guide called them, on the way into Cairns one late afternoon, but otherwise the roos went the way of the Canadian moose. In other words, the other way. But you really cant blame them for keeping under shade during the day and only getting active at dawn and dusk: we would have done the same given a choice, but we had over 500 miles to conquer and so had no choice but to whack up the aircon and the stereo, and go for it. We would like to share with you what it is like driving the outback for 8-10 hours, but we probably can’t … so we video’d about 10 seconds of it for you. Now multiple that by however many it takes to reach 10 hours.
Monkey Mia was a bit of a last minute addition to the trip that we had seen a paragraph about in a travel brochure whilst in Invercargill, at the bottom of New Zealand. One paragraph and two pictures, and we’d driven 850 kilometres to get there, on the back of a full day flying the day before … it was with some trepidation we finally pulled in there. What if it was a disaster?
This time, as in all of Australia, luck was definitely with us. This was a resort, but of the low rise and laid back, no shoes variety, with an abundance of kids, tents, villas and sand. The kids immediately went off into a gang, leaving us to love the aircon and chill out after the long journey.
Monkey Mia is not just any old beach resort. It is on the World Heritage Shark Bay, which boasts more species per square metre of water than anywhere else. It is, quite literally, the middle of nowhere, almost half way up Western Australia. It has sand like demerara sugar. It has the calm. warm waters of the Indian Ocean. It has a backdrop of surreal red soil hills. It has no other civilisation within 4 hours drive. It has emus. It has sea snakes (we know, we saw one swimming a foot away from the beach). It has sharks. It has 10%, or 10,000 of the world’s dugong population. Oh, and it has its own pod of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins who come right up to the beach to be fed 3 times each morning. Well, at least they’ve only missed 4 days in the last 5 years. Yes, this is why people come all the way to Monkey Mia. And is it worth it? Oh yes, absolutely. This place is pretty close to paradise in my view.
The heat did not abate for the four nights we stayed. At night, it felt like you were stepping out under an oversized hairdryer, but it was incredibly dry. We tended to head out relatively early in the morning, and then seek the shade and air con of our room or to the pool for the vast majority of the day, only heading back out into the sun come 5pm. On our very first night we simply couldn’t resist the relative cool of the sea. After a very nice chat and bottle of wine with a young couple from Godalming, we walked by the ocean, and then just stripped off one by one and dived in, en famille. This is what we had been waiting for! Sea that is gloriously warm, transparent and calm. You simply cannot beat the Indian Ocean.
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