A trip to Australia: Monkey Mia 11/05/2018

Monkey Mia, the strange name has many versions of how it came to be….Mia is aboriginal for home…..but the Monkey bit is unsure……the three reasons we were given

1) a ship called the Monkey once anchored here.

2) the Asian pearl fishermen who originally worked here, had pet monkeys

3) the Australians who followed called their sheep and goats “monkeys”

Take your pick !

We were told the best time to see the dolphins was at 7;45 when they come in for the first feed….they can come in twice more after that, but its not guaranteed.

so 7;00AM we are on the road to Monkey Mia some 26 km away from campsite…..

Can you here the Didgeridoo ? Sun-a–rise early in the morning…….

It was a road full of sea mist too…….

As the dawn breaks the Dolphins start to arrive…

As I am a bit against animals being in zoos/circuses/enclosures, I was extremely pleased to hear that, the dolphins are only given 10% of the fish they would normally eat in a day….this means they have to go and catch fish in the sea as well.

Years ago they had two main problems because of feeding the dolphins their full daily amount of food, the calves never learnt how to catch their own and starved to death, and secondly the calves were dying as they cant suckle in shallow water….so yet again us humans killing with kindness !!

The other thing they learnt was to only feed the females, as the males get too aggressive with each other and possibly with people…..

Here they are arriving……

At the first feeding 5 dolphins arrived to be fed, they each went to the person holding the bucket with their name on (they read dont you know?)

Then one person is chosen to step into the water and give one fish to one dolphin, this happens with 5 people for each dolphin…..and you are not allowed to touch them.

On this first feed there were over a hundred people, so Dave and I stood on the jetty to watch, we were waiting for our boat trip . ….

Turtles

We were lucky to see the dolphins come back for their second breakfast (must be hobbit dolphins)

This time there were 5 dolphins and only 29 people……and I got chosen to feed PUCK a mother of 7 calves….she has the scars of a shark on her side from when a shark attacked her and killed her baby

Just before I fed her….

And just after……

She seemed pleased !!

Then we caught our day trip boat…….to see more dolphins and maybe a Dugong..

This is a replica ship that is used by schools to help with team building exercises…..

Dolphins…here.they call them a “party” not a “school”…as they all seem to enjoy playing !

Dolphin riding the bow wave.

This was the best picture we got of a dugong !! The boat is only allowed to stay with the dugong for 15 mins max,and in that time he surfaced about 7-8 times, but by the time we had seen him and focused the camera, he was submerging again…..there was only one left in this area,the rest had left for warmer waters.

We went to the van to have a bit of a lie down after the boat trip and lunch…..I was taking a photo of a wren……when THIS appeared out of the bush…..we got in the van, as he had been fed before and was looking for the sandwich we didnt have !!!!!