Today was planned to be a fairly easy day with time to prepare for our camping trip tomorrow to Steep Point – the most westerly tip of mainland Australia.

The day started out with a visit to Eagle Bluff and the boardwalk. The landscape around Denham and the Shark Bay area is extremely dry and arid with no trees at all except in the township…

The views from the bluff were great with Eagle Island in the foreground and the rugged coastline with the turquoise waters below.

Eagle Island is an important nesting place for rock parrots, pied cormorants and silver gulls.

Unfortunately, the boardwalk was under repair so we could not walk the full length but did get most of the stunning aspects to look at… the flies again were pretty bad here unlike back at Denham where they seemed to have abated….

We noticed in the distance what looked like a white sandy beach at the end of a track with a beautiful inlet of water, so we made our way down there – it was very picturesque and the water was lovely and clear… and warm! It was actually Eagle Bluff Campsite – a free camp – with no one camped there! It would have been a great place to stay.

A bit further along Shark Bay Road was the turn off to Ocean Park – the aquarium. After parking, we noticed that TREVOR HOMES was in the carpark…. the same car we had seen at Twilight Bay in Esperance a few weeks ago – they must be following us around 😊….

We grabbed a coffee at the aquarium and then went inside for the tour and shark feeding. The tour was excellent and very informative in particular in relation to the local species of sea life that can be found in the Shark Bay area.

There were lionfish on display that are venomous with the 13 spines on their back containing the venom which is very painful if you step on them…

The puffer fish is poisonous if eaten…. Unless of course it is prepared by a Japanese Fugu Chef – who knows how to remove the poisonous section leaving the delicacy called fugu that can be eaten.

They had a school of clownfish living the symbiotic relationship with 2 anemones…. Beautiful little fish – the black variety is the local clownfish species…

There was a beautiful black and brilliant blue fish cleverly created with the blue to indicate it is poisonous – just a defence mechanism to avoid predators as they are not actually poisonous…

We also saw large snapper, bream and other varieties of fish in the bigger outdoor tanks…

They had some lemon sharks and a juvenile tiger shark affectionately named Rex.

Rex will be released into Shark Bay when he is old enough – the population of tiger sharks are needed to keep the dugong population in check as tiger sharks are their only predator here… if the dugong were to proliferate they would strip the sea grass beds and the salinity of the water would change affecting the unique environment of Shark Bay…

None of the sharks were particularly hungry at the feeding time – they just circled around the pool…

There was other sea life such as rays, sea snakes, barramundi and the timid shark – a small shark that Shark Bay was named after due to the numbers of them found in the very saline waters…

On the way back to camp to have lunch we came across some local emus hogging the road…

Back in camp Gordie got busy cooking scones….

Branch got busy inspecting the Weiss fridge which had a bit of a fail… or was it accidently left open all day by a user (??? Beryl???)

After checking out the situation Branch returned home to find some very suspicious items on the clothesline at the Loveday van… lots of cleaning cloths and wet paper towel…. Had something happened they were trying to keep under wraps???

A closer look revealed that MacGyver was at work under the sink – a leakage had occurred causing some minor water issues in the kitchen cupboard… the pipe had loosened and whoever had done the original plumbing job had put the seal on back to front – an issue quickly rectified by Branch and MacGyver but the event had caused some extra cleaning work that was not usual in the Loveday camp….

We sat down to a delicious afternoon tea of legendary Hunter scones…. then got to work packing for our camping trip tomorrow…

The sunset was superb – far superior to yesterday’s and that was saying something!!

The moon under some fluffy clouds made a somewhat eerie sight above the caravan park.