Masterly exploiters of low tide mangroves and mudflats, Mudskippers are something of a paradox: a fish out of water. By ranging on the surface at low tide, these amphibious creatures are able to feed without having to worry about falling prey to marine creatures. Birds such as herons will target larger species of mudskippers; however, the Mangrove Mudskippers found at Jack’s Creek are too small, too quick and too well camouflaged to interest the local wader bird community.

Mangrove Mudskippers use their pectoral fins to propel themselves along the surface in a series of hops and skips. The same fins also allow them to climb mangrove trees.

Paul Elliott
Eco Beach Nature and Activities Guide

A messenger from Hogwarts School of Wizardry mingling with Muggles? No, just a high profile VIP. Not since supermodel Miranda Kerr’s visit earlier this year has Eco Beach had such a distinguished guest.

Recently, a Barn Owl has taken to roosting in fishing guide Kurt Williamson’s tackle shed. At dusk, the owl sallies forth from Kurt’s shed in search of a meal. With night vision roughly one hundred times more effective than humans, barn owls are highly successful nocturnal hunters. Even in pitch black conditions or in thick grass, by using their ultra-sensitive ears to detect noise and their heart-shaped faces as sound direction finders, barn owls are still capable of rustling up a meal.

Other nocturnal birds that have been seen around Eco Beach include Barking Owls, Boobook Owls, Tawny Frogmouths and Spotted Night Jars. More than 220 species of birds have been recorded around Eco Beach. Eco Beach offers private bird watching tours.

Paul Elliott
Eco Beach Nature and Activities Guide

Last week was ‘World Oceans Day’ – a day where we honoured the great body of water which connects us all.  We celebrate what it provides us and what it represents.  Perfect timing as the Humpback whales round the corner of Cape Villaret at Eco Beach!

Kimberley whale watchers are doing there own form of breaching – on land! – as these gentle giants sing  their way back up the WA coast after a long summer in  Antarctica.  A pod was sighted 20 nautical miles off the coast of Broome on Sunday, 3^rd of June!  And more sightings are being recorded daily.  Eco Beach’s naturalist guides and whale researchers, Dave and Fiona Harvey, are prepping the retreat’s whale watching boat, ‘Willie’, to give guests a “whale of a time” again in 2012. Read more about whale watching at Eco Beach.

To top if off, the WA Government has declared that Camden Sound – 300km northeast of Broome – will become a ‘marine park’ this year.  This place of incredible biological significance is the biggest Humpback whale calving area in the southern hemisphere!  Now, mothers and calves can cruise on past Eco Beach, knowing  they will be protected in their northern nursery grounds.    The park area is also home to coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangrove forests, tidal flats, and habitats for dugong, sawfish, dolphins, crocodiles and heaps of other precious marine life.

Camden Sound Marine Park, covering nearly 7,000 sqm, is the first of 4 new marine parks for the Kimberley under the $63million Kimberley Science and Conservation Strategy.  The Kimberley will also see marine parks at Roebuck Bay Broome, Eighty Mile Beach and the North Kimberley.  I think we’re doing our part in the North West for the World’s oceans.

The Kimberley’s Humpback whale population is numbered at around 22,000.  That’s nearly double the east coast population!  So that’s double the action too!  Breathtaking displays of breaching, tail slapping, pec slapping, blowing, spy hopping and even singing.   So book an Eco Beach experience complete with a whale watching trip soon.

Get up close to  Mother Nature

Have you heard of the term “WWOOFing around”? And I’m not talking dogs here!I’m talking about a creative world-wide organisation that posts volunteer workers to organic farms in exchange for food, accommodation and the chance to learn aboutmore sustainable ways of living. Eco Beach joined ‘Willing Workers on OrganicFarms’ (WWOOF) in 2009 and has since seen a bunch of keen Australian and international organic garden enthusiasts grace its shores and turn its pindan soils into a veritable, thriving organic patch of ‘Eden’.
We have between 2 and 4 WWOOFers staying at the retreat at any one time, maintaining our renowned organic gardens, which supply 70% of the resort kitchen’s fresh produce needs – from edible marigolds, to eggplants, to beans that rivalany fairytale’s! Fresh, delicious dishes can be created (and devoured!) with little supplementation from retailers.
As a WWOOF host, Eco Beach can’t use chemical herbicides, weedicides and non-organic fertilisers – we wouldn’t want to anyway! So it’s up to our vigilant WWOOFers and staff members to fend off the pests! And although we seem to bewaging a continuous war against stealthy wallabies and persistent grasshoppers, organic farming is definitely worth the effort when you taste the end product! Not tomention how healthy its is!
Our WWOOFers also carry out general garden maintenance and look after EcoBeach’s chickens. Our ‘girls’ very kindly produce about 20 eggs a day as well as the fertiliser for the organic gardens. They are well rewarded for their gifts to us with an ocean view and scraps from the garden and kitchen.
If I have my chance to work and travel around the world again, I think I’ll sign up as a WWOOFer………..at some idyllic remote coastal getaway……….maybe Eco Beach! It’s not only the chickens who get the ocean view whilst at work!