Dolphins have been my favourite animal for as long as I can remember. I can’t really say why. Perhaps it was the fact they lived in the ocean, or they were so intelligent, or that I could draw a half-decent cartoon version of a dolphin as a child. I have a vague recollection of deciding one day that, just like a favourite colour, everyone had to have a favourite animal and that was what I chose. I had dolphin posters in my room, dolphin pens in my pencil case, dolphin letter paper and a much-prized dolphin cake-topper from the top of Grandpa’s birthday cake which I ‘bought’ from him using the only currency a 10-year-old granddaughter has -– hugs and kisses (I assume that is legal tender with most grandfathers).
During a family trip to Perth over summer, I convinced my parents to go on a short road-trip up the Western Australian coast with me. Initially, I wanted to go all the way to Broome but we soon realised that was unrealistic in the time frame we had given ourselves. We decided to only go as far as Coral Bay, stopping in Geraldton, Carnarvon and Monkey Mia on the way. Well, Monkey Mia is not exactly ‘on the way’ to Coral Bay. It’s actually 300km round trip outof the way to Coral Bay. However, Monkey Mia is known as the place where you go to swim with dolphins and I was not going to miss out on that.
We left Geraldton that morning as early as we could handle (about 6:30am in the end) and made straight for Monkey Mia. The (minimal) research we had completed told us that the dolphins arrive at the shore two or three times a day between 7am and 12pm to feed. Leaving it as late as we did was pretty risky, as we arrived just after 11am. By the time we got there, we were told, the dolphins had already been in twice and it wasn’t often they returned for the third time. Not to be discouraged, we hurriedly changed into our swimmers and went to the water holding out hope to see them.
We sat out there for a long time! Not just us though. As well as plenty of people, there were a few pelicans who were blatantly hanging out on the shoreline, also waiting for the dolphins in the hope they would be able to pick off a few fish while the dolphins were feeding. The beach was great and we had a good time swimming in the lovely, clear water, all the while keeping our eyes trained on the ocean for a telltale fin. My dad was convinced he saw a shadow in the water a fair way out but we shrugged him off.
Before we knew it though, someone was pointing and taking photos. There, right among the swimmers was a dolphin. The advice from the rangers is to stay still if you within 30 metres of the dolphin in the water so before he came our way, I jumped out and grabbed my camera. My parents stayed in the water but I followed him up and down the shoreline taking as many photos as I could. The pelicans followed him up and down the shoreline as well! We were told the dolphin’s name was Piper and he was 5 years old. He spent quite a lot of time chasing fish along the beach, popping up to check the people he swam past as well.
He went around the jetty and off farther than I cared to follow after a while so we left him to it. We were so excited to have at least seen one dolphin when we thought we might not get to see any at all! It was so cool to be able to see a dolphin in it’s natural environment like that and I’m glad he stuck around for so long. Walking back to where we were originally swimming, we also got to see a turtle swimming around the jetty. My lens and excited photography didn’t do him justice but we watched him swimming around for a while before going to grab some lunch.
While we were eating though, there was a bit of a fuss on the shore and we looked up to see even more dolphins arriving at the beach. They stayed a bit farther away from the shoreline this time but there was three other dolphins swimming around past the end of the jetty. We almost missed our lunch delivery since we were so distracted.
So in the end, we managed to see quite a few dolphins, which made my day! In the future though, I’d recommend staying somewhere at lot closer to Monkey Mia to be able to see the earlier dolphin visits. Monkey Mia itself seemed to be a great beach side resort to stay at with a nice atmosphere, beach, restaurant, etc. If you like the beach (and dolphins) and didn’t mind the drive, it would be a worthwhile family getaway for a few nights. I would love to go again some time.
AD
A few of my favourite things... 