Betten On Bike: DAY 57 - 5TH JUNE 2013 - MONKEY MIA

Day 57– 5 June 2013 - Monkey Mia – Rest Day

Up at 6.45 – and we are all excited as after our quick breakfast we are heading down to the Monkey Mia Beach for the world famous Dolphin Feeding. Wow this is something I have wanted to experience ever since I can remember – so we stood on the boardwalk as per the signed instructions to wait until the rangers would speak to us about how this amazing interaction with the friendly local dolphins would take place.

The rangers briefed us about walking down and not entering the water and how it was important to form a line as this way the dolphins feel less confronted by a group of people. We were also told we shouldn’t touch them and how, should we be chosen to hand feed them, how to hold the fish (by the tail & place it flat on the water as the dolphins see by turning their head). Each eye on a dolphin operates separately from the other so they turn their head to the side to look out and up at you.

As the ranger continued to give us all this interesting information we were told we could enter the water in a straight line and wait for the arrival of the dolphins and WOW it was so wonderful when they came in close to the shore and swam by to within a metre or two or where we were standing. Yes indeed one turned its head and seemed to smile at us.

We were told that the females live to an age of about 40 and in this time they are either pregnant or feeding their young or mating to become pregnant.

The dolphins here are friendly and social animals and we were lucky that 11 turned up this morning for feeding. They only feed each dolphin around 500 grams of fish each – this is controlled so that they still need to fish for themselves and these skills are passed on to their young. Interestingly also is that they only feed the females as the rangers found that the males became aggressive at times so now only females are fed & come in to the feeding sessions.

All in all it was a great experience but so much more controlled than in the past as I heard from a regular visitor from Perth who has been coming to Monkey Mia and staying with her family there every year for over 20 years. She told me that she felt the current practices are quite rigid and that a few years back her son had been standing in the water at waist deep and a dolphin had swum to him and circled him in a playful manner and that he had been reprehended by the operators for playing with the dolphin but she had told them that it was the dolphin that had come to her son.

The rest of the morning was to catch up on emails / blog updates and then lunch and Walter & Andrea were keen to go to Denham which is about 24 kms away to visit the coastal town and go to the hot tubs close by. I opted to stay in Monkey Mia and was keen to do a big beach walk. So I took off in the direction of Red Bluff and what a beautiful afternoon it was – I met the friendly lady I mentioned earlier who loves this place so much and I can totally understand why – it is so isolated and so beautiful and peaceful. She told me about Red Bluff and said that it would take me around one and half hours and I thought why not ! I saw a few people fishing for the first 500 metres of so of my walk then after turning into the next bay and the next there was absolutely no one in sight and so it was for the next 2 hours – bliss !!

When I reached the main beach 3 and a half hours later Andrea was there & she told me that they had enjoyed their visit to Denham and the hot tub (fed by a bore 450 mtrs deep – the temperature is a constant 40 degrees) had been very relaxing. They had also visited the Ocean Park Aquarium where they had also caught up with Sam, the uni-cyclist. They had seen sharks, lots of fish species, turtles etc etc & had found it all very interesting. So a pleasant time for everyone on this rest day.