What time is it there?!

One thing we’ve noticed about this side of the country is that some of the tourist leaflets leave a little to be desired. If you’re driving from town A to town B they’ll tell you all about the accommodations and restaurants in both, but very little about anything you might want to see along the way. So you set off on a journey through apparent wilderness only to see a load of signposts for tourist attractions along the way. Our 2004 Fodor’s guide isn’t much better, and judging by the number of towns mentioned it seems that they didn’t actually spend much time in the state at all!

As a result of this we are coming to rely on tips from fellow travellers, and one of the best so far has been to visit Hamelin Bay. The ‘Rough Guide’ (published Sept. 2005) has this to say... “There’s a beachside caravan park, which also offers bikes for rent”. Mmmm, sounds great. Nowhere does it mention that wild stingrays come right up to the beach, and that you can stand in ankle deep water and they will eat fish from your hands. So along we went, and it turned out to be one of the best bits of our trip so far.

Even as you approach the beach there aren’t really any signposts, just a small board when you get down to the beach which explains that the rays are friendly. Don’t follow the signs for the beach carpark (that takes you a bit too far along), the rays hang around near the boat ramp. Local fishermen and visitors on holiday will return to the beach and, having trimmed their catch, will then let you take what’s left to feed the rays.

So there we were, standing in the shallow water with a couple of fish heads in one hand and a whole carcass in the other, hopefully there aren’t sharks as well! This doesn’t sound a very appealing snack, and it certainly smelled pretty bad, but we were told “they’ll eat anything that smells like fish”. In fact, with all the excitement, it took Nikky several minutes to realise that she was standing there with a handful of dead fish parts! There were several smaller rays (only about 18” long) and then one or two much larger ones (the adults we assume) that had a ‘wingspan’ of about 5ft or so. All you have to do is hold your dead fish under the water in your open hand and the ray will come along and just suck it up, a very strange sensation as they are so soft and silky underneath, just like being licked by a big dog!

The advantage of the lack of information about the place was that we spent nearly 3 hours on the beach with only about half a dozen other people. So if you’re in the right part of the world come and visit soon before there are coachloads of people lining the beach.