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.