Sea lions and Sand Dunes

Another drive this morning – to Seal Bay, just shy of Vivonne Bay so about 60 km. Seal Bay, as mentioned  a couple of days ago is mis-named as the animals that live here are actually Australian sea lions, not seals at all. One of the big questions or wonderings of life is obviously, what is the difference between these two types of pinnipeds (Latin for fin footed of course)?

At the visitor's centre we paid for a ranger tour of the area, including down on to the beach where we got up to about 10 metres from the sea lions. The ranger explained the difference between seals and sea lions and from memory it goes something like this: seals wriggle on their bellies when on land while sea lions can walk on all four flippers – which are bigger than seal flippers. Sea lions have visible ear flaps and seals do not.

The start of the tour (which lasted about 45 minutes) took us down a board walk where we saw a few sea lions hiding behind the dunes, even right under the board walk to keep out of the cold morning breeze. One young sea lion peered up at us – it’s face was full of personality!

Down on the beach we saw dozens of them – many young pups as the mothers go out to sea for 3 or 4 days and the pups stay on the beach and ‘play’ with other pups while she’s away. The adults on the beach were resting after spending their 3 days at sea. So, although they look lazy, they need the rest after being away for so long. They seem to huddle up together in small groups while snoozing.

This was a wonderful wildlife experience that we all thoroughly enjoyed. It is so different to being at a zoo – this was witnessing animals in their natural habitat.

After the tour, we took a walk along the upper board walk which gave us fantastic views over the coastline and almost a bird’s eye view of the sea lion's colonies home. They like this beach because of the rocky reef off shore which ensures the sharks (the sea lions only predator) stays away from the beach.

There was a whale skeleton in the dunes, which was a young humpback that got washed up here in the 1980’s.

There were also some interesting wildflowers on the walk to the lookout. 

After this experience we went to nearby Bales Beach for a short walk. No sea lions along this section. It is part of a longer walk in the Cape Gantheaume Wilderness area. A pair of sooty oystercatchers were going about their daily business in the shallows as we walked.

After some lunch we went to Little Sahara which was not too far from Seal Bay. This is a whole bunch of sand dunes – about 3 km’s worth of them. They are inland, not near the sea. On private land, they’ve been opened up for tourists to explore on foot or hire sand boards and toboggans. As part of our KI Outdoor Adventure package we have unlimited access to the boards and toboggans.

Today we got four toboggans and a sand board. The latter seemingly a little more complicated as it requires one to stand up and 'surf' down the dunes.  

The parents of the crew loved tobogganing, had a go at the sand board but lasted only a metre or two. The kids were no better initially, but soon picked up some skill. Ethan especially was soon cruising down the dunes with ease and with increasing speed. It was then that the parents decided to quit the stand up board and leave it to the junior experts!

With the kids having the times of their lives, I wandered up and down the dunes and admired the dramatic scenery which looked even more dramatic with some stormy looking clouds around.