Port Lincoln – Ceduna
9 – 16 June
I’m sitting here, on a cliffs edge on Hall Beach, watching the sunset. To my right is Estelle and our fire pit giving us a satisfying heat burning the pine we had picked up from the side of the road earlier. Swell rolls in and smashes up against the cliffs which look as which they are eroding at a huge rate (in a geological timescale) generating some pleasant background noise. We are nibbling on a dozen Coffin bay oysters we picked up late that morning and sipping on some Clare Valley Riesling. The oysters are so fresh that they don’t need anything at all on them and taste amazing paired with the slightly sweet and sharp wine. This is definitely our happy place.
The catch phrase for the Eyre peninsular is ‘A breath of fresh Eyre’ and we are really experiencing this travelling up the west coast of the Eyre Peninsular now that the weather has cleared up and settled down.
A few days prior to this we had headed across from Port Lincoln to start our trip up the west cost of the Eyre Peninsular towards Ceduna at the start of the Nullarbor. The famous Coffin bay was our first stop where we spent a couple of nights. The first night we ventured into the national park, which again required our 4WD to get into any of the decent camp sites. The unusually high tides meant that the bay was over the sand track in a few spots and required careful negotiation, as getting stuck in salt water didn’t sound like the sort of fun I was looking for that evening. The camp site was large and empty, on the edge of a marine reserve, though they were good enough to exclude beach fishing from this reserve. This being the case, out came the rods and we tried our luck again. A couple of smaller yellow finned whiting decided to bite, but they were a few cm short of legal, so back they went.
The next day we spent exploring the park and the town. Coffin bay has a permanent population of about 600 people but swells to over 10,000 during the major holidays. I liked it during the off season, very quiet and relaxed. We tried fishing again off the town jetty as we heard reports of whiting off there, but again were disappointed. That night we checked into the campground to make use of their showers and headed to the local yacht club for a drink and some simple but satisfying dinner cooked by the volunteers there.
The next morning we were on the move, but the weather had cleared up even more overnight and we were absolutely taken by the beauty of the bay and surrounds. The tide had gone out so the Oyster beds were now visible and the water flat. Definitely a holiday spot I would recommend to anyone. As one last point of order, we picked up another dozen Oysters on the way out of town, why not really.
We needed to go for a dash back to Port Lincoln to pick up a few things for the car, namely a new set of suspension bushes for the front, as the current ones were flogged, and a new battery charger, as the other one cooked itself in Port Lincoln last time we were there.
Dotted up the southern west side are a series of cliff lined beaches where a reasonably steep cliff sits above a nice sandy beach. They are known for their good surf and fishing and in good weather are a great place to set up for a couple of days and relax. We first popped into Mount Dutton Bay which is at the northern end of Coffin bay and was a small port for shipping wool out of the region. We had heard that there is good fishing off the pier there, but upon discovering that the fish weren’t biting, we retreated to the old woolshed for a cup of coffee and slice of Toblerone and raspberry cheesecake.
We stopped into another few bays up the coast to see what they were like and eventually decided on Hall Bay, about an hour north of Coffin Bay and set up camp. We ran into a couple of nice local ladies going for a walk around the bay who were more than happy to offer us the world, just as long as we didn’t outstay our welcome. Very nice locals in the area apparently. We set up camp, and as the sun set, had our oysters.
The next day we decide that this isn’t a bad spot, and bunker down for the day so that Marcel can fit the new suspension bushes. Normally he would have gotten someone else to do this crap job (yeah right!), but as it was a long weekend, and trying to book a place to do it while on the move can be a pain, so it was just easier to do it himself. The old bushes looked terrible, and they had only done 7000km!
After being on the coast for close to a fortnight we decided it was time for a change of scenery and headed inland to the Gawler Ranges. On the way into the National Park we stopped off at Pildappa Rock. The granite outcrop has ‘wave’ formations from weathering, and climbing up on top of the rock there were numerous rock pools that were full with the recent rains. Having known nothing about Pildappa Rock until we turned up it was really neat to chance upon it.
The rocks in the area are 1.6 billion years old and we had plenty of opportunities to explore the rocks of the National Park by climbing up Yandinga Falls, Kolay Micira Falls and the well-known Organ Pipes. The rocks really did feel old, with the granite cracked, worn smooth and tilted in all directions.
The pastoral heritage of the area is evident with the old Paney Homestead where at one point there was a settler family with 14 children living in a 4 room residence with a lean-to at the rear! In the afternoon we took some of the 4wd tracks through the park. The sun was shining, and with tunes on, the view of the ranges, grassy rolling foregrounds and lots of roos hopping around it was a great drive.
That evening we enjoyed company around the campfire at Waganny campground with three members of ARPA (Australian Retired Peoples Association) who had just completed Googs Track as part of a larger group. It was a great evening of companionship and they were able to confirm that our vehicle wouldn’t have any trouble with the track as we were in two minds up to that point.
On the way out back to the coast we visited Australia’s second largest monolith after Uluru Ayers Rock – Mt Wudinna. Let’s just say that the second largest was a magnitude of size smaller that its famous relative, but in the flat grain country it did rise up out of the landscape giving a good view of the country and we got a close up look of the rock.
Our final stop on the Westside tour was at Streaky Bay, a pleasant little village supported mainly by the local fishing industry. We needed to get an oil change on the vehicle and get it generally checked out so booked it in for the next morning at the local mechanics, went for a shop and drove around the town. The Caravan park was on the bay looked nice, but naturally we decided to go somewhere else where we didn’t have to pay. We found a nice spot 20 minutes south at the top point of Sceale Bay on top of a cliff overlooking the bay. It was a little windy, but pleasant enough.
That night was not so pleasant however. At about 3am, a thunder storm cell roller through over our location and gave us a wholloping. Very heavy rain and reasonably strong winds accompanied the thunder and lightning. This was quite alarming at the time as we would have been the highest point for about a km, but it only went on for only about half an hour, after which time it changed back to a nice calm night, and we could go back to sleep.
The next day while we were waiting for the oil to be changed we walked into town and saw the sights; the Pier, the Main Street, Carrol J (a wooden boat which had been restored after being wrecked), a model of a 5m Great white shark which had been caught in the early 2000’s. We eventually settled in a café overlooking the jetty called mocean. Estelle had decided it was pronounced mac-ion and thought it sounded a bit fancy, Marcel had the unfortunate task of informing her it was pronounced motion. Estelle didn’t like this pronunciation one bit, and I can see why, but it was a nice setting, was warm, did good coffee and gave us a place to sort a few things out on the computer for a couple of hours. One last stop at the op-shop to pick up a new glass, for the one Marcel broke weeks earlier (he’s now the bowls champion for Streaky Bay apparently) and we were back in the car up to Ceduna to complete the West coast of the Eyre Peninsular.
M & E