Dolphins and a Giant Easter Bilby

31 March 2013 – Easter Sunday

We saw a beautiful sunrise this morning as we headed out early to reach Monkey Mia for the first dolphin feeding of the day at around 7.45am. It took us 1 hour 20 minutes to get there  and we were joined by  640 others to watch 6 dolphins.  The dolphins were rather put off by the crowd so the whole thing was a big disappointment – the dolphins at Tangalooma are much more impressive but they come at night so it’s harder to see them.

But the Easter Bilby more than made up for the dolphin disappointment.  The reason we were silly enough to show up at Monkey Mia on one of the busiest days was because the kids had seen the poster promoting the Easter Bilby coming to Monkey Mia. 

Because bilbies have been released into this area as part of the ambitious  Project Eden, and there are bilby signs around the area (not that we got a single photo of them!!!) it makes perfect sense that the Easter Bilby should make an appearance here.

This one had a Canadian accent and it was just such a laugh.  For a while we were the only family in the ampitheatre which surprised us all given how many families would’ve been staying at the resort. The kids got bilby ears and some activity sheets along with an Easter egg so they were as happy as larry.  We’re so glad we went along just to see the Easter Bilby.

Simon and Hugo did their first geo-caching hunt (www.geocache.com) while we were there. We met some people geo-caching the day before at Cape Peron and Hugo was really taken by it. So now we’ll be geo-caching our way around Australia! 

We then headed to the other side of the peninsula to Eagle Bluff and saw 50 sharks swimming in a big group and another enormous dugong just before he went munching in some seagrass and became hard to see. We’ve been so lucky spotting dugongs as our camping neighbours have left Shark Bay not seeing a single one! 

To finish the end to a hot day (it was around 35 degrees) we jumped in the hot artesian spring tub at the old Peron Homestead at the entrance to the national park. It looks like a cow trough but gee we felt lovely afterwards! 

Note: We met Ranger Roger on the track back to our campsite and asked if there were any bilby burrows around Gregories (our campsite).  He’s never seen a single bilby here!