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Madfish Bay (#4 in “Deep South WA meets Southern Ocean” series)

William Bay National Park is less than half an hour’s easy drive, west from Denmark.

Its two much-instagrammed, “iconic” attractions are Greens Pool and the almost-adjoining Elephant Rocks.

Ludicrously, the two “icons” are the only places where most visitors to William Bay National Park ever set foot.

Madfish Bay is also magnificent, dead-easy to reach, often deserted, and only a few minutes away from the oft-thronged/overcrowded Greens Pool!

 

 

Madfish Bay, 3.17 pm, 16 September 2016. Copyright Doug Spencer.

 

 

William Bay National Park is very much smaller than D’Entrecasteaux National Park or Fitzgerald River National Park, but still substantial, and also multi-faceted.

Greens Pool and Elephant Rocks are deservedly celebrated, but need no more spruiking; chances are excellent – even if you have never been to Western Australia – that you have seen them in a calendar, a book, tourism advertisement or television program.

During peak summer, any visitors will be very far from alone in the crystalline waters of Greens Pool, or on and around Elephant Rocks…and finding a “convenient” parking space could prove an impossible dream.

One summer’s day in 2018 (I think) the parking queue snaked circa one kilometre from the Greens Pool car park, but it took my beloved and I all of three minutes to reach Madfish Bay’s nowhere-near-full car park,

Once we had walked for five minutes, we were then mostly out of sight of any other humans for the next couple of hours.

Warmer temperature, brighter sunlight and flatter sea aside, Madfish Bay that summer day was much the same as it had been on the afternoon of 16 September 2016.

(all photos copyright Doug Spencer, 16.09.2016)

 

 

Madfish Bay, 3.21 pm, 16 September 2016. Copyright Doug Spencer.

 

 

Madfish Bay, 3.14 pm, 16 September 2016. Copyright Doug Spencer.

 

 

Madfish Bay, 3.40 pm, 16 September 2016. Copyright Doug Spencer.

 

 

From Madfish Bay, looking east, 3.37 pm, 16 September 2016.

 

The next chapter in this series features a recent walk through the easternmost part of William Bay National Park.

Click here to see and know more, including this National Park’s two “icons”.

Published in nature and travel photographs Western Australia