Clear Blue Zoo
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday October 9, 1999
Venturing into the heritage- listed haven of Shark Bay, Bruce Elder comes face to face with the very beginnings of life on earth, an abundance of feral beasts and all manner of wonders from the sea.
Western Australia is not just a distant State. It is another country. Its history, its geography, its economic livelihood, even its gloriously gung-ho 1980s entrepreneurs don't really belong to the fabric of east coast life. Pause for a moment and reflect on the way we have interpreted early Australian history over the past 30 years. There were re-enactments and an exuberant hoo-ha in 1970 when we celebrated Captain Cook's voyage up the east coast. In 1988 Sydney Harbour was awash with tall ships and hyperbole as the nation celebrated the bicentenary of the First Fleet and the settlement at Sydney Cove.
When we try to recall the European history of the continent's west coast, all we have are a few broken shards of classroom memory. Does anyone recall, or acknowledge, that the European discovery of Australia was changed forever when the Dutch East India Company, already established in the Spice Islands (modern Indonesia), decided that rather than crossing the Indian Ocean in a north-easterly direction, the smart and faster alternative was to hitch a ride on the Roaring Forties from the Cape of Good Hope, turn sharp left around the 110th parallel, head due north and, before you knew it, you'd be in Batavia (modern Jakarta). This route became all the rage in 1613 and it took only three years for poor old Dirk Hartog to overshoot the mark and "discover" the coast of Western Australia. That was 157 years before Cook sighted Cape Hicks.
Dirk Hartog stopped at Turtle Bay on what is now Dirk Hartog Island and clambered up the cliffs until he reached Cape Inscription, where, on a headland looking out over the vast Indian Ocean, he nailed a pewter plate with the breathtakingly unimaginative inscription: "1616. On 25th October there arrived here the ship Eendraght of Amsterdam. Supercargo Gilles Miebais of Liege; skipper Dirck Hatichs of Amsterdam. On 27th do. she set sail again for Bantam. Subcargo Jan Stins; upper steersman Pieter Doores of Bil. In the year 1616."
Just exactly why the upper steersman got a name call (maybe it was his platter and he had to spend the rest of the voyage eating off the table?) no-one knows. It was, however, the first firm evidence of Europeans landing on Australia.
In 1697 another Dutch sailor, Willem de Vlamingh, reached the island and, finding Hartog's pewter plate still in its original position (although somewhat the worse for weathering), he removed it and replaced it with another plate. The original was returned to Holland, where it is still kept in the Rijksmuseum.
De Vlamingh's replacement plate had an even less interesting inscription on it. After getting the date wrong, he listed all the important sailors on the voyage and concluded with: "Our fleet set sail from here to continue exploring the Southern Land, on the way to Batavia."
Two years later that remarkable buccaneer and explorer, William Dampier, sailed into Shark Bay on his second voyage to Australia. Dampier wrote in A Voyage to New Holland: "The Sea-fish that we saw here (for here was no River, Land or Pond of fresh Water to be seen) are chiefly Sharks. There are Abundance of them in this particular Sound, and I therefore give it the Name of Shark's Bay ...
"Twas the 7th of August when we came into Shark's Bay; in which we Anchor'd at three several Places, and stay'd at the first of them (on the W. side of the Bay) till the 11th. During which time we searched about, as I said, for fresh Water, digging Wells, but to no purpose."
In spite of Dampier's assessment, Shark Bay is a jewel on the West Australian coast. The small Skywest plane which brings passengers from Perth to Shark Bay reaches the coast south of Carnarvon and, on a clear day, treats visitors to one of the wonders of the world. Dampier was right when he noted that the coast was dry and inhospitable, but Shark Bay is home to the largest sea grass meadows (3,700 square kilometres) in the world. From the air, particularly at low tide, the coastline becomes topsy-turvy land. The land is red, dry and barren. There is a narrow strip of white beach. Then, just below the surface of the bay there are seemingly endless dark green meadows of seagrass. These meadows are home to an estimated 10,000 dugongs (12 per cent of the world's population), 6,000 marine turtles (including the largest community of the endangered loggerhead turtle) and, as the name suggests, thousands of sharks.
Not surprisingly, Shark Bay was World Heritage listed in 1991. It is one of only 11 places on Earth to fulfil all four World Heritage criteria. The stromatolites at Hamelin Pool are "outstanding examples representing the major stages of the earth's evolutionary history". The seagrass beds "influence the physics, chemistry, biology and geology of the bay". It contains "unique, rare or superlative natural phenomena" including Shell Beach, the Zuytdorp Cliffs, Peron Peninsula and the sand dunes and cliffs of Dirk Hartog Island. And it has "significant natural habitats where endangered species survive", being the home of 26 endangered mammals and "13 threatened reptile species, three rare bird species, one eighth of the world's dugong population and significant loggerhead turtle rookeries".
In a very real sense, for those who care about Australian history and those who marvel at the wonders of nature, Shark Bay is one part of Australia that everyone should explore at least once. Apart from the World Heritage and the early history it also, almost incidentally, has about 700 species of flowering plant which, in the spring, turn many areas into brightly coloured wonderlands with the blooms blanketing the harsh desert soils. It has restaurants where you can gorge yourself on seafood for prices which would have seemed modest back in the 1970s. Monkey Mia is world famous for its human-friendly dolphins and, if you believe Rex Hunt, Dirk Hartog Island has the best coastal fishing anywhere in Australia.
DIRK HARTOG ISLAND
Although it is is 80 km long, 14 km wide at the widest point and covers 62,000 hectares, Dirk Hartog Island really offers the visitor only one option: catch a boat or plane across to Dirk Hartog Homestead, which offers simple accommodation (the lights go off when the generator goes off) and plenty of tours around the island. If money is no object, your 4WD will be shipped across for $500 return.
The island is run by Kieran Wardle, his girlfriend Tory and their dog Jed. Apart from offering trips to Cape Inscription, where Hartog first stepped onto Australian soil (it is a day trip over narrow, sandy tracks), they will feed you sensational fresh fish and take you on both nature and fishing tours. They will also tell a story - a very Western Australian story - of how the twosome have ended up as the island's sole inhabitants.
Once upon a time in the west, as all good WA stories start, there was an entrepreneur who built an empire of some 300 supermarkets which, because his name was Thomas, he called "Tom the Cheap" supermarkets. Almost overnight Tom the Cheap became Tom the Very Wealthy. He aspired to high office, became lord mayor of Perth and, as was the tradition of the time, was duly knighted. Thus, with millions of dollars in his pockets, Tom the Cheap metamorphosed into Sir Thomas Wardle and, in 1969, just to add some old-style class to his new status, he
purchased Dirk Hartog Island, where he ran sheep and lived the life of a prosperous landed gent.
It was to this island, at the age of six, that young Kieran, Tom's grandson, came for his school holidays. He fell in love with its wild beauty and decided to convert the old man's station into a rustic resort.
By any measure the island is a magical place. It is barren, isolated, pummelled by the huge and unpredictable waves of the Indian Ocean and, in spite of the feral animal population (mostly goats), it is awash with interesting native animals and unusual geological formations ranging from 15-metre-high sand dunes to rocky cliffs and fossilised remnants of ancient coral reefs. The island is home to a number of endangered species, including the rare black and white wren; each summer loggerhead turtles nest on the north end of the island; and it is home to the sandhill frog, which is found only in Shark Bay.
Just near the Wardle homestead there is an island bird sanctuary inhabited by terns, cormorants, osprey and seagulls, where you can watch as huge white-breasted sea eagles go about their dangerously predatory business of stealing chicks.
WA National Parks will eventually reclaim the island. At the moment the Wardles own 97 hectares freehold and have a lease which runs out in 2015. Until then only eight vehicles are allowed on the island at any one time. The maximum number of visitors is 35 and it is closed between November and March 1 because an unremitting southerly blows non-stop through the summer.
THE STROMATOLITES
So many of Australia's true wonders - the ancient fossils at Lake Mungo, the strange beauty of The Coorong, the "clapped-out buffalo country" that is so much of Kakadu National Park, the stromatolites at Shark Bay - need both guidance and knowledge before they can be truly appreciated. Without expert knowledge you find yourself staring at something and going, "Yeah! so what is so special about that?"
At Hamelin Pool, in the south-eastern corner of Shark Bay, there is a wooden walkway where the visitor can wander around and gaze down at hundreds of rocks which are shaped like solid cauliflowers. You can read the placards and take some photographs, but it is only when you understand that these rocks are, as far as scientists can tell, the very beginnings of life on earth, that you start to grasp the enormity of these strange stromatolites.
What you are seeing requires an act of faith because these rocks are not rocks. They are the end products of microscopic living organisms known as cyanobacteria which secrete an impossibly fine film of mucus. Sediment attaches to this mucus and so these rocks grow at a rate of about 0.5 mm a year.
What is truly remarkable is that at Marble Bar, about 800 km north of Hamelin Pool, geologists have found fossilised stromatolites with cyanobacteria (distant relatives of the forms at Hamelin Pool), which have been dated to between 3,450 and 3,550 million years ago. In reality, you are watching (although you can't see it) a living process which is three billion years older than the dinosaurs and which is being carried out by the oldest known living organisms on Earth. The challenge, as you stare down into the heavily saline waters, is to try to grasp the true antiquity of the process.
SHELL BEACH
No less impressive is Shell Beach. As you drive up the Shark Bay coastline towards the town of Denham, Shell Beach looks like any one of a thousand Western Australian beaches. It is deserted and its pure white dunes rise above the low-lying scrub while its beaches turn the waters of the bay a dazzling turquoise. However, as you approach it is clear that this is not a sand or coral beach. It is a beach made up of millions and millions of tiny white shells. These are cardiid cockles (fragum erugatum), which for some 4,000 years have survived and prospered in an environment where the high levels of salinity have deterred their natural predators. At points along the coast the shells reach a depth of 10 metres and at other places their compression has produced a kind of rough and attractive shell-rich limestone known as coquina limestone. In Denham there are a number of buildings constructed entirely out of coquina limestone blocks.
Monkey Mia
The tourist centrepiece of Shark Bay is Monkey Mia. It was here in the 1960s that a local fisherman's wife, a Mrs Watts, started feeding the dolphins. By the 1980s the area had become world famous for its friendly dolphins, which came to the beach to nuzzle and frolic with visitors and eat fish provided by the local rangers. Its isolation and the tireless work of the researchers and rangers have ensured that Monkey Mia has not been over-commercialised and overdeveloped.
Yes, it is true that during the school holidays and particularly over Easter the beach can get very crowded, but outside those peak periods the numbers are manageable, the dolphins are carefully nurtured and monitored, the local caravan park has been turned into a good quality low-key eco-tourism resort, and there are two catamarans which offer short trips around the bay where dolphins, turtles, dugongs and the occasional shark can be spotted.
For more information on Denham, Shark Bay and Dirk Hartog Island check out the A-Z of Towns at the Herald's Walkabout Web site at http://www.walkabout.fairfax.com.au/.
Bruce Elder travelled to Western Australia courtesy of the Western Australian Tourism Commission.
Case Notes
Destination: Denham is the main town on the coast of Shark Bay. It is located on the western coast of the Peron Peninsula, 23 km south-west of Monkey Mia and 831 km north of Perth.
When to go: Best times are from May to November. Wildflowers are in bloom from September onwards. Summer is very hot and dry.
Things to do: Snorkelling and scuba diving in Shark Bay; half-day catamaran trips from Monkey Mia; try the fresh seafood in Denham; visit Hamelin Pool and Shell Beach; take the boat out to Dirk Hartog Island and spend a couple of days exploring.
Reading: William Dampier: A Voyage to New Holland, &c. in the year 1699.
Getting there: Stage 1: Fly to Perth with Qantas ($1,450 full economy return. There is a range of reduced fares from $499 to $629 depending on pre-booking and time of flight. It is cheaper to fly at night).
Alternatively, fly to Perth with Ansett ($1,450 full economy return. There is a range of reduced fares from $499 to $599 depending on pre-booking and time of flight. It is cheaper to fly at night).
Stage 2: Fly to Monkey Mia (Denham) - cheapest flight by Skywest is $305 for a 21-day advance ticket. Best deal is Ansett and Skywest from Sydney - $804 return for 21-day advance purchase.
A Greyhound bus goes to Denham daily from Perth. It costs $242 return. A 2,000 km pass costs $215 and will get you to Denham with kilometres to spare.
Getting about: All tours pick up from accommodation around town. Otherwise there are taxis.
Packages: Skywest offers a two-night package including a return air fare from Perth and two nights' accommodation at the Monkey Mia Resort from $530 a person (twin share) with an extra $63 a person for additional nights.
Accomodation: Monkey Mia Dolphin Resort, 1800 653 611; Dirk Hartog Homestead, (08) 9316 2971.
More information: Shark Bay Tourist Information Centre, P.O. Box 431, Denham, Western Australia 6537. Tel (08) 9948 1253, fax (08) 9948 1237. Western Australian Tourist Centre on 1300 361 351.
© 1999 Sydney Morning Herald