Campin Oz 2017 - Shark Bay
This post was copied from my site AboveUnder.com a site dedicated to my travel drone photography.
Shark Bay for us was a bit of a roller coast ride of highs and lows.
We arrived into Denham which is the hub for adventure in the region and spent a couple of days at a caravan park there exploring some of the lagoons of the area.
AU0015 - Red Sands of Shark Bay
We also took a day drip into Monkey Mia a spot I had heard a lot about from people in the South West.
Although we were treated with the beautiful waters and beaches we were continually plagued by swarms of flies which forced us to wear mosquito nets at all times. So after a couple of days we took off on our most ambitious camp yet.
We wanted to head to Steep Point which the most westerly point of Australia. The plan was to camp at False Bay for two nights and take the car up into Steep Point.
After a 3 hour bumpy (unsealed corrugated roads are a bitch) ride we finally reached what we thought was False Bay. There was no signposts as to where exactly we should be camping so we decided to follow some tracks we saw that led over the beach.
Big mistake. We ended up getting seriously bogged in the sand thanks to the 1.5 tonne weight of the trailer plus the weight of all our gear in the back of the car. In hindsight it was inevitable.
We spent the next 3 and a half, hot, sweaty and sandy hours trying to dig ourselves out. We may still have been stuck there now if it wasn’t for a stroke of luck that another car was at the end of this remote beach. Even more luckily for us, they were locals who knew the area and were happy to help us out.
So massive thanks to John and Emma who run the Shark Bay Ocean Park centre for spending hours and hours of their Sunday helping two naïve tourists out. If you are ever in the area you should definitely go say hi and check out the excellent Ocean Park.
Well after that debacle we were so tired and run down we decided just to head back to Denham, get a hot meal, shower and recharge our batteries before our next move.
As we had one unplanned night spare now, we decided to head south to Nanga.
On the way down we also checked out Shell Beach, named after the trillions of tiny shells that make up its sands. I found it hard to capture that with a done however but noticed that the way the water rippled on the shallow sands made for a stunning pattern so I captured that instead:
After Nanga we continued on with our plan to Hamelin Pool for two nights.
On the first night we were lucky enough to have perfect wind conditions at sunset so were able to get stunning photographs of the Stromatolites which make the area famous.
AU0021 - Hamelin Pool Stromatolites
The campsite of Hamelin Pool, although barren was beautiful in its own way with hundreds of butterflies covering the small plants on the grass:
A constant pain however was the flies, I have never experienced anything like it before and never want to again, fingers crossed that our next destination of Exmouth has none!
