Re-visit 3: Cape Peron, Francois Peron NP

Another great spot, although you need to know what you are doing to get there – or better still, have a mate who knows what he is doing. Tyres down due to the seriously deep super fine sand was so necessary, that they have a air pump and instructions in place.

Confusingly, it seems half the coastline in Western Australia has a Cape Peron (Peron naming nearly as many places as Governor Macquarie, except that he did so in French). Usefully to distinguish the many others, this Cape Peron is in the Francois Peron National Park, north of Denman, and also north of the amazing Monkey Mia, on the Western Australia north coast.

SkipJack Point , on the East of the peninsular, had fantastic contrasting colours:

And the whole area had amazing rocks:

The water was absolutely crystal clear, so from the cliff top you could see all sorts of water-life, dominated by the sharks. Sharks turn out to be harder to identify than SLBBs (Silly Little Brown Birds). Apparently a useful identification tool is the teeth, but, as Lord Blackadder would note, I think I see a flaw in that plan.  My expert adviser suggests it is probably a Galapagos Shark.

There were also Manta Rays:

It was a good spot to experiment with different camera settings with the waves, so here is a selection:

There were thousands of shore birds, which looked unsurprising. But then when you look closely it often turns out you have birds you didn’t even know were there. So in a standard flock of Crested Terns, I discovered Caspian Terns.

and Pied Cormorants (not Little Pied Cormorants):

Other surprise findings were the Ring-necked Parrot (core breed for this sub-species is the Port Lincoln Parrot) and the Yellow-throated Miner (very similar to the Noisy Miner of the East), and the Western Australian variation of the Silver Gull:

It was quite flat:

Michael Monaghan

April 2020