Day 127 Around Denham

Early start in the morning to drive to Steep Point, which is on another peninsula near Denham, but a bit of driving first on bitumen and then on sandy roads. On the way in the early morning an emu with chicks was crossing the street and disappearing fast in the safe bush. For sandy roads one has to reduce tyre pressure - on the street to Francois Peron Nationalpark is a convenient tyre pressure station, but as we drove the 'Useless loop drive' to the turn-off for steep point and on, the gravel road was very rough, but not tyre-pressure station. At first, we thought we did miss it, so turned around but at the Park Entrance Payment area, they did collect the fees but do not provide a tyre pressure station.... Well, with this we decided that steep point is not our cup of tea and drove back (after repairing the smaller damages at the car from the rough road...). Shortly afterwards we saw on the road a car, which had an accident and what was needed for recovery provided by two other 4x4 which had already stopped to help. Seems like it was a good idea that we didn´t attempt this trip, as we are not well enough equipped for such off-road trips...

So change of plans: for the day we decided to visit points of interest around Denham, which are anyway on the way from the other peninsula back to Denham. First stop was Hamelin Pool to see the stromatolites. Well, the boardwalk on which you could see the stromatolites in the water was destroyed in 2021 and was supposed to be rebuild in 2022. We walked to the beach, but the boardwalk was not even in repair and the beach had a fence around in such a distance from the shoreline that you didn´t see anything from the beach.

Next stop was Shell Beach: the beach has no sand, but only lots of tiny shells. Due to the position of the beach, the water in this area is saltier than in the ocean, so only a few organisms like these small shells can survive. Pretty impressive to walk down to the beach and along the beach with all kinds of shell and never ending shell.

After a short stop at a nameless lookout stop next to the street we drove to Eagle Bluff Lookout in the hope to find some wildlife just like the other day. There are great views from Eagle Bluff especially with the photogenic island in front and the colours of the water. We tried to find some turtles, dugongs and dolphins but could only spot some rays swimming through the lighter coloured water as well as one shark.

On the next lookout, Denham Point, Stuart wanted to have a look around to maybe see some Bilbies, but we always just saw a sign warning about them...

At the last lookout near Denham, Nicholson Point there was a street down to the beach and along the beach, but as we weren´t sure about tide times, we decided to just enjoy the views.

On the way back to Denham were again emu warning signs - and also some emus next to the street. In and around Denham we have seen quite a lot of emus but no kangaroos, which was pretty different to other areas we drove through.