David and Enid's Travels

Early morning surf at Port Elliston

Perhaps it is our prairie roots that draw us to the sea.  Both Enid and I, like the prairie boys that joined the navy in large numbers during World War II, find it fascinating to watch.  Maybe it is in part the huge vista that is what we enjoy, blue sky stretching to the horizon in all directions, so like the blue overhead on the prairies .  We certainly enjoyed todays travel along the Eyre Peninsula as it joins the wide open ocean of the Great Australian Bight, taking short side trips of a few kilometers to go to the ocean edge where high cliffs of limestone meet the sandy soil of the desert.

Early this morning I walked to a point about two kilometres from our campspot.  High above the ocean on the cliffs I watched as the sun rose creating pink streaks of foam on the churning surf below.  Waves crashed into the jagged rocks of the cliffs where reefs along the bottom edge churned the blue-green water into white foam.  I had planned to try and video tape some sea birds; however, there weren’t any very interesting ones, so instead I spent an hour filming and photographing the surf.

After breakfast we left and drove along the Great Ocean tourist drive, a loop of about 12 kilometres outside Elliston.  There are more spectacular cliffs, a bay where they surf on the huge incoming swells, and every so often sculptures which they’ve erected on the cliffs.  Some where whimsical, like a pair of flip-flops and a surfer carrying his board on a bicycle; a pole with carved salmon; replicas of the Easter Island heads; and others that we didn’t stop to look at too closely.

There is a self serve bread stand at Colton (which appears to be a house, and a church, and that’s all).  We bought some fresh bread and rolls, putting the money into the honesty box there.  They bake the bread daily, and it is an interesting way of marketing it.  There would have been about a dozen loaves of bread in the stand, and a few bags of rolls.

Following that we drove in to the Talia caves, which are sea caves carved into the limestone cliffs.  The largest cave is “The Woolshed”.  When we arrived there were quite a large number of tourists there.  They didn’t stay long, and soon we were by ourselves, and we stayed and watched the ocean surf for almost half an hour.  We then drove on to “The Tub” which is a large sinkhole that has collapsed.  About 30 metres wide and half that deep, it has an opening to the ocean where the tide comes in at very high tides.  When we were there it was empty, but we didn’t climb down in, although you can.  We ate our dinner here and once again watched the ocean.

We stopped tonight at the small town of “Streaky Bay”.  It is very hot here tonight, which is a real change from the last several days.  We are on a bay, but it is very sheltered from the main ocean, and so it is almost as if we are several kilometers inland.  We don’t have the nice cool breeze here off the southern ocean.  In fact Enid went down to the water, which is only 50 metres away, and found that it was far too hot to swim in.  Moreover, this is a fishing area, and they clean the fish at a table near the water, so there are many seabirds on the water.  The very large pelicans have been conditioned to come in to the cleaning station whenever they see a person approaching the area with a basket.

Sand dunes at Talia Caves

When we got here today I spent several hours editing the photographs I’d taken today.  I am too fascinated by the waves and took too many pictures!  I find it hard to photograph the Australian landscape.  It is so big.  Like photographing the prairies, the view never ends, so I find myself taking large panoramas and stiching them together.  It is easier to videotape, for then at least you can pan.  In any case, I’ve uploaded lots more pictures, so feel free to view them if you have time at www.digipac.ca/pictures.

Point Avoid

We began our travel today by driving to Point Avoid, the southern tip of Coffin Bay National Park.  It is easy to see why Matthew Flinders named it so on his voyage around Australia in 1802.  It is an extremely rugged coastline with very large reefs and rocks where you can see the surf breaking a long distance out to sea.  Golden Island is approximately a kilometre off shore, and there is a reef almost continuously between the shore and the island.  A very strong rip current ran out from the shore towards the island, with continual rapids more than 100 metres wide just off the shore.

Point Avoid and the reef to Golden Island

The shore itself is a beautiful white sand beach stretching for kilometres in either direction from the point.  In the distance are large sand dunes that have formed back of the limestone cliffs which define the shoreline itself.  The cliffs are about 30 metres high and their eroded remains form many of the formidable rocks that form the point.  It is not a location one would want to sail into.

We walked along the beach for quite a while, but slowly as I was taking a lot of video, and Enid isn’t feeling very well.  She seems to have a head cold and her body is aching.  We’re not sure where she caught it from, as we haven’t had a lot of contact with people, but it was likely in one of the grocery stores we are in, as that’s the only place we see people closeup much.

A family (grandparents, father, sons) arrived at the beach after us.  When we met them they had caught three “Aussie Salmon”.  Since it’s not a trout or a salmon, I’m not sure where it got its name.  They are a large fish, and the biggest one they caught was about 5 kilograms.  They form large schools, and they watched for them from high on the cliffs.  When they spotted a school they would go down to the water and cast out into it.   

After we ate lunch at the point we drove to Port Elliston.  The drive is very uneventful, and the scenery is just kilometre after kilometre of rangeland.  There are a couple of large salt lakes we drove by, very few sheep, and not much of anything else.  We stopped here early to do the laundry, and after we’d started the wash I walked to the grocery store and bought a litre of ice cream.  I ran most of the way back from the store (about 800 metres) so that the ice cream wouldn’t melt.  It was a nice treat, and only the second ice cream we’ve bought here.  It is warm but not hot, but very windy this afternoon, so the wash is nearly dry in the hour since we hung up the clothes.

Southern Ocean coast at Fishery Bay, Eyre Peninsula

Today, January 26, is Australia Day and a holiday.  It is the anniversary of the first landing of British convicts in Australia.  For us it was a day to explore the southern tip of the Eyre Peninsula as we left Lincoln National Park and drove to the area known as Fishery Bay.  This is a rugged coastline much more exposed to the Southern Ocean than we were in the park, and there are high cliffs dropping off shear to the ocean below.  It was a whaling station for a short period of time from 1837 to 1841.  It is now a spot used by some surfers.  There is a large beach to the north end of the bay.

Shingleback Lizard

Leaving there we drove to Mikkira Station where we intended to camp.  It is supposed to have a number of wild koalas, and be a nice campsite.  However here was no one there when we arrived, and we decided not to pay and stay since we weren’t sure what we would find.  We did see a large Shingleback Lizard as we were about to leave.

We ate lunch by a monument to Matthew Flinders near a site where he dug a well to get water in Port Lincoln.  Then we stopped in the town to get groceries and fuel, and continued on to Coffin Bay National Park where we are now camped in Yangie Bay campsite.  It is not nearly as nice a campsite as we were in for the last three days, it’s quite windy, but it will do.

Yachties Beach

It was a very nice morning, some scattered cloud, but mostly sunny and a pleasant temperature.  We walked south to Yachties Beach, and beyond, a total round trip of 13.6 km, stopping for lunch at the end of a very long beach to eat on the rocks.  I was a complete gentleman, and let Enid walk ahead of me with her trekking poles, so that she could break the hundreds of spider webs which we had to walk through.  The spiders have built large webs all across the path.

The hike is one of the nicest oceanside hikes we have been on.  The trail winds over the tops of the shoreline hills, never far from the ocean.  The water close to shore was a beautiful turquoise blue, especially so where there is a sandy beach as the white sand below the water contrasts with the deep blue water over the submerged rocks.  We saw a large pod of dolphins swimming off a rocky point. Two large boats came by, and when they did the dolphins disappeared for a while.  Then they reappeared as we walked further along the trail.  They stopped and circled in the water right off the shore, we assume fishing.  We were about 100 metres away and we watched them for several minutes, able to hear them breathing as they blew water below us.

White-bellied Sea Eagle

We walked along a sandy beach across from Carcase Rock for almost two kilometres.  Only one tiny headland jutted out to break the beach, and we climbed over the top of the rocks to continue on.  When we reached the end of this sand we stopped on the rocks to eat lunch.  The two fishing boats were anchored just offshore around the point from where we ate.  A white-bellied sea eagle flew overhead while we were eating.  Later it flew over us again, very low, as we walked back along the beach after lunch.  The tide was a little lower so I was able to walk around the headland on the beach by timing it judiciously to avoid the waves.  Enid walked back over the top.

Yachties Beach is a beautiful sandy cove about 400 metres long.  There was no one else there and on our walk back we stopped and swam in the bay.  It felt really good to cool off.  It became very windy this afternoon, and the south east wind was raising whitecaps on the water in the gulf.  It was sheltered in the bay, but the wind caused us to drift northward quite quickly as we floated on our backs relaxing in the cool water.

It became quite cloudy and windy by late afternoon.  We swam here at the campsite and washed our hair in the ocean water.  I was surprised that the shampoo worked as well as it did in the salt water.  Just before supper it began to sprinkle rain, but it hasn’t rained much yet.

September Beach and Donington Lighthouse

It was very cloudy this morning, and barely spit some rain.  Enid and I both read.  By noon it started to clear so we walked the 6.7 km loop around Darlington Point, past the lighthouse, down by the beach on the west side of the point, then across the mallee scrub and back to our campsite.  After that we went for a swim in the ocean.  The water was very nice, but it was cool when we got out as it was quite windy.

Internet connectivity here is very spotty.  In fact, I’m sometimes amazed that we have any at all in some of the rather remote places we’ve been.  The Australian cellular network seems to be very well developed.

September Beach, Lincoln National Park

I awoke early this morning and walked north along the beach at Port Gibbon to see if I could video the rosey gallahs which live along the cliff.  The tide was in, so I only had a few metres of sand between the water and the cliff, and walked as far north as I could before the water completely cut me off.  There were many gallahs on the cliffs and I got some good pictures.  I also got some nice video of the cliffs in the early morning light.

We drove to Port Lincoln and stopped at the visitor centre to enquire about the national park.  It turns out that their tuna festival was on (this area is the center of the tuna fishing industry and they also grow farmed tuna here), so after we bought groceries we walked to the shore where we bought a plate of tuna and a plate of kingfish for lunch.  It was a lot of fish and was very good.  Enid liked the kingfish more than the tuna, so we she ate about 1/3 of the tuna, and I had the rest – vice-versa with the kingfish.

There is a large Viterra grain terminal in the port.  As well we saw several large Viterra inland elevators on the drive down.  This is grain farming country, the fields are very large, but there are many more farmhouses than we’ve seen in the more central part of South Australia around Blanchetown where we’ve also seen grain farms.

It’s tricky to find the road out of Port Lincoln to the National Park.  The attendant in the visitor centre said we had to be careful not to miss the turn, but we did anyway.  Neither Enid nor I saw a sign pointing to the park.  We had to make a U turn on the highway.  At first the road into the park was good, but the last 15 km to the campsite we are at (September Beach) was very rough dirt.  Driving along the corrugated road really shook the motorhome.  If I hit just the right speed it wasn’t too bad, more vibration than violent shaking. 

The campsite we are in is large, and it is not too busy.  We have a great deal of room for our motorhome, in fact, you could easily fit two of them into the one site.  We went swimming right after we got here.  The beach is beautiful white sand, and it is sheltered so that the waves are small.  Best, it is almost deserted.   There was only one other couple swimming when we went in this afternoon.  There are a few people in the day use area about 400 m south of where we are camped, but they were mostly fishing, not swimming.  The water temperature was very comfortable.  At first we swam with our swimming goggles on, but when I saw some fish I went back and got our masks and snorkles.  Of course after that we saw no more fish, but we did go for a long swim along the beach.  We then walked along the sand as far as it goes in both directions.

It began to cloud over after supper tonight.  The forecast is for showers overnight, but clearing tomorrow.  The temperature here is very comfortable, as it was only about 25 °C today.

Port Gibbon beach

We are back on the ocean tonight.  It has been a while as we last were on the ocean in Nambucca Heads on December 13.  It was cooler in Port Augusta last night compared to up north in the Flinders Ranges, but quite windy.  When we left this morning the sky was very slightly overcast, but that cleared by noon.  I had hoped to be able to see the solar power station at Wyalla, but it doesn’t seem to be open to the public.  The only road I saw was blocked with a locked gate.  However we did drive to the largest wind turbine farm in South Australia, 35 towers on top of “Mount” Millar (mount is hyperbole, as it’s really just a high ridge).  They are quite large and can generate up to 75 MW of electricity which is about half of what is generated in Saskatchewan.

From there we drove a bit more south to this free campsite at the hamlet of Port Gibbon.  It is in about 7 km in from the main highway.  There are a few houses here and about 10 campers set up in the campsite which is right beside the ocean.  We walked down to the beach and a couple of kilometres north when we got here.  Much of the beach is liittered with thick layers of dried gassy material (it must be seaweed), 30 cm or more deep.  I discovered about half way along our walk that I’d forgotten to put the memory card back into my camera when I took the pictures off last night, so I’d been photographing all day into nothing.  I did get some nice pictures of the beach here though after reloading the memory card.  There are long red cliffs of conglomerate rock in both directions north and south on the beach.  Birds nest in the holes in the rock, and we saw many rosey gallahs and a couple of falcons (brown falcons I think).  After we walked back to our campsite I went the other direction with the video camera and shot some pictures of the birds.  However a very noisy motorbike came by as I was doing so, frightened all the birds away, and they didn’t come back.

Brachina Gorge road

I’d asked at the information desk if it would be ok to take our motorhome across the Brachina Gorge Road.  “Yes, it’s wide enough,” was the response of the attendant.  She failed to mention how rough it was!  It is passable by a two wheel drive vehicle, but I’d sure hate to take a car on the road.  Our motorhome shook and rocked all the way, and we drove most of it in first or second gear.  From about the mid-point of the roughly 20 km long trail is really just a single lane very stony track which crosses over the creekbed several times.  There was water running at most of the creek crossings, but very little, probably never more than six inches, and the roadbed was solid so there was no problem with getting stuck.  However, the motorhome really shook on the rough road.  At lunchtime we put things back in place on the shelves.  The teapot had even turned right upside down!

First though we stopped to video some of the red kangaroos around the site of the Old Wilpena Station.  I had Enid walk towards the kangaroos to get them to bound away.  They are so tame that they don’t move very far so she herded them like cattle to move for filming.  A static kangaroo looks just like a big mouse watching you with its large erect ears (remember the Sylvester cartoons).  Later on we saw a couple of emu right by the side of the road; however, they moved away while I was getting the video camera ready.  I did film them, but by then they were away in the distance, along with some more kangaroos.

Brachina Gorge

The road, rough though it was, was an interesting trip.  It is marked with all the geological features as you cross over the vastly eroded remains of the Flinders Ranges.  There are many very pretty outcroppings of red rock along the way.  I also saw a Yellow Footed Rock Wallaby (but Enid missed it), though not at the spot where the park attendant had told me to look for them.  When we left the park there was still about 10 km of road left until we reached the highway.  Though this road was wider, not like the narrow rocky track where we passed through the gorge, it was no faster.  It is severe washboard (or to use the proper Aussie term, it is corrugated).  The irony is that just before you reach the highway there is a large red “Reduce Speed” sign.  As we were travelling in first gear at maybe 10 kph it is hard to imagine how much slower we could have gone!

It was very hot when we stopped for lunch, I’d estimate about 40 °C.  It was also quite windy.  It did cool off as we approached Port Augusta.  We stocked up with groceries for the next few days, bought diesel (the price is 10 cents per litre more than when we left here on Tuesday as it’s now $1.36 per litre), checked in to the caravan park, and did our laundry.  It dried on the line in just about an hour as it was so warm and windy.  We’re very glad we got our air conditioner fixed here on Monday before we headed to the Flinders Ranges.  Now we are going down to the Eyre Peninsula, and it should be much cooler.

Store, Old Walpina Station

Once again today we hiked in the morning before it got too hot.  We walked to the Old Wilpena Station, though there isn’t really a trail to it that is marked from the information booth so we just followed the road.  Along the way we walked in to the solar power station which is used to generate the electricity for the Wilpena resort and campground.  It has about 70 solar panels, several buildings which house storage batteries, and a diesel generator for backup.  It can produce about 100 KVA, and at the time of its construction in 1988 was the largest solar power plant in Australia (however, there are several larger ones now, and some that are massive being planned).

We saw a large number of red kangaroos this morning as we hiked to the Old Wilpena Station.  They were lying in the shade of trees, and as we came too close they would first become erect and look at us, and then often bounded away, but not far, just to the shade of another tree a bit farther away.  The station buildings form a historical display of how a working pastoral station was arranged, with interpretive signs.  There were massive red gum trees, probably the largest we’ve seen by some of the buildings and along the creek, some more than two metres in diameter at the base.

After we’d looked at the buildings we walked back to the campground along a dirt road that leaves from the back of the station.  A way down this road there was a junction with the Heysen (walking) and Mawson (biking) trails and we followed this back to the campground.  The trail leaves from the north west corner of the campground in the unpowered tenting sites, but it isn’t clearly marked until you get right to the gate where it starts.

Yellow throated Honeyeater

This afternoon I arranged to get the windscreen in our motorhome replaced when we are in Melbourne in two weeks.  I also photographed a number of the different kinds of birds that are here.  There are honey eaters which are out in the heat of the afternoon and they eat at the blossoms of the eucalyptus trees.  Later on in the day there are other birds including a large number of Australian Ringnecked Parrots.

Panoramic view of Wilpena Pound from first lookout

We hiked this morning to the Hill Homestead and then up to Wangara Lookout which looks out over Wilpena Pound.  Wilpena Pound is an interesting geological feature, a large plain that is completely surrounded by mountains.  The name “pound” came about because it was a natural enclosure for sheep in the time of early European settlement.

It was a good morning to walk, as it hadn’t yet got too warm, and the trail is shaded.  We were surprised to find pools of standing water in Wilpena Creek, but there are some springs there.  Where the water is pooled there are actually cattails growing.  The rest of the trail is much drier, but along the river there are giant eucalyptus trees, some with trunks almost two metres in diameter at the base.  The trees are very tall and provided some nice shade.

The Hill Homestead is just one stone building that has been rebuilt, and a bit of old farming equipment: rusting plows and other iron implements, and a large metal boiler.  They used the boiler as a roller when they were trying to clear the land in the pound.  There are several interpretive signs here which tell the story of the failure of the farm starting around 1850 until it eventually was deserted in the late 1920’s.  It really is just much too dry and hot to farm this country.

When we arrived there were a large number of German speaking tourists at the homestead.  Most were sitting waiting for their guide who shortly came down from the lookout trail.  There was an emu in the yard, and it paid almost no attention to all the people.  We also saw some wallabies (or possibly euros) and they too were not nervous.  There is a stone with a sculpture of two Aboriginal men on it, and an interpretive sign that explains the Aboriginal dreamtime story of how Wilpena Pound (Ikarra) was created.  A young girl, about five or six years old was there with her mother.  The mother was explaining the story to the girl.  The girl seemed pretty skeptical.

Wangara lookout view towards the Wilpena Gap

Next we climbed up behind the homestead to the two Wangara lookouts.  It is a climb of about 100 metres on fairly smooth stones.  It was warm as there is no shade.  Near the top lookout I saw a yellow coloured goanna about 50 cm long, but I cannot identify it from pictures I’ve located on the Internet.  We saw it catch an insect.  Past the top lookout there is no real trail, but there was a track that ran up to a radio antenna.  The antenna wasn’t in use and it was guyed with ropes that had deteriorated.

The views out over Wilpena Pound are very good from these lookouts.  You can see the entire range of mountains that forms the western and southern boundaries of the pound.  The lookouts themselves are on the hills forming the easter boundary of the pound.  To the east you get spectacular views out through the Wilpena Gap.  We came back down, sat in the shade by the old homestead, and ate our lunch.

This afternoon we stayed in the motorhome which was very comfortable now that the air conditioner is working again.  We made some plans for when we will get to Melbourne, and found that we can get the parts for our awning there, and also booked an appointment to get our windscreen replaced.  I also spent some time shooting some video of the large spiders that build webs everwhere.  This evening it cooled off nicely again and I took more video of the kangaroos and the parrots.