Shark Bay is a world heritage marine site, consisting of a couple of narrow peninsulas and some islands off the west coast and the waters around them. The area feels very remote, the nearest town being 400km away across an arid landscape of red sand and low shrub backed by a blinding blue sky.
The first bay we looked around was Hamelin Pool where the ultra-high salinity of the water allows the oldest life form on earth to continue to thrive. They are called stromatolites which are living fossils comprising of types of bacteria thought to have existed 3 billion years ago and which produced the oxygen needed for life to develop on the planet. They bind particles of rock together so what we could see with the naked eye looked like rocks.
Heading up the main peninsula, our next stop was Shell Beach, comprising entirely of little white shells.They are from a type of cockle that thrives in the very saline water. We enjoyed a cooling paddle here along with some emus!
We stopped at a few more lookouts on the way up the peninsula, notably Eagle Bluff from where we could observe sharks and turtles in the crystal clear water below.
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