TIME ELAPSED SINCE DEPARTURE : 37 WEEKS
DISTANCE TRAVELLED : 18,890 KMS
COFFIN BAY
The short 45km journey from Port Lincoln to COFFIN BAY takes you across the bottom of the Eyre Peninsula to the western side. Famous for its very big (Sooz: and yummy!) oysters in a pristine environment consisting of a small township with a general store, a caravan park and a couple of servo’s tucked into one corner of a very large inlet. We had a good taste of the local oysters when we splurged on our last night in Port Lincoln. The local Italian restaurant had a seafood platter for two that offered ½ dozen oysters natural and ½ dozen Kilpatrick that came from Coffin Bay along with the usual king prawns, calamari, fish fillets etc. YUM! And at $110 for two people, it was cheaper than most seafood platters. We know – we like our seafood platters! 😊
A lot of the Coffin Bay water-way is only accessible by boat (Sooz: Technically, we have a boat – a kayak, but the winds were too strong to make it pleasant.) There are few roads and some 4WD only tracks and large areas with neither. We took on some of those 4WD tracks to check possible fishing spots but left our run a little late in the day as at times, you need to take it very easy over quite rough terrain. Still, we found a little beach and cast for some whiting. No luck, but we caught a couple of juvenile salmon which are called ‘salmon trout’ in SA. We got back to the local caravan park well after dark but managed to catch the end of a wine tasting event that was hosted by a Port Lincoln vineyard around the park’s BBQ area. It was a good wine tasting event as the host was encouraging people to ‘try everything’ that was lined up. OK then, happy to oblige. (Sooz: Leigh even liked one enough to buy a bottle!)
We received a dose of a genuine ‘Indian Summer’ while in Coffin Bay. It’s almost ANZAC Day and temps have climbed into the late 20’s and early thirties for 4 straight days but I am wondering what might follow. I have heard some locals mutter ‘geez it’s warm, but when it changes, it’s gonna change!’.
We are travelling with a kayak on the roof of the car. You might have seen it in our images library on the home page. We chose to take Susan’s one with us as it is a bit shorter and lighter than mine. It doesn’t get used on a daily basis – on the contrary it collects dust and dings when travelling away from the coast, especially in outback areas. (Sooz: Aha! The real reason we took my kayak…Leigh’s kayak is safely in storage while mine is taking a beating! LOL!). There have been times when I have wondered if it was a good idea taking it at all as it adds an extra 25 kilos to our load. It is certainly an aerodynamic drag and even when we are in coastal areas, there may be two or three weeks between paddles. But there are times when the location & weather combine to provide an ideal opportunity to get in it and get out into solitude and nature. One such occasion presented itself in Coffin Bay on one of the very warm Indian Summer days. I launched from a mostly deserted beach and paddled out into deep water and began seeing if a fish would sacrifice itself onto the hook I was dangling. Suddenly I heard some splashes. It drew my gaze to the general direction and a few moments later another splash was associated with the dorsal fins of a couple of dolphins. They were close enough for me to hear them breathe each time they surfaced and I quickly abandoned the fishing and followed them. It turns out they were (presumably) a mother and child; I have no idea of telling if the little one was a boy or girl but it was half the size of it’s parent. After 15 or 20 minutes, I think they grew tired of me hassling them and they took a deep breath, headed below the surface and that was the last I saw of them. But it was a nice experience and one that justifies hauling a kayak across the country even if it adds to an already very large fuel bill.
(Sooz: Leigh forgot to mention the Emu’s at Coffin Bay. They were everywhere. Heaps of them in the Caravan Park, some seemed to live in the main town car park, they would stop traffic to walk across the road. It was amazing to see so many!)
ELLISTON
The next stop along the western side of the Eyre Peninsula was the small community of ELLISTON. Population 370. That’s half the size of Coffin Bay which is basically a dot. So this place was half a dot. What do you call a half of a dot? Is there an official word for such a thing? I digress. Our arrival here coincided with the end of the Indian Summer. We had crappy, windy, squally, wet-ish & rather cool weather for all 4 days. Elliston is set in in a wide-mouthed bay that has a reef running right across the mouth. Thus, the large Southern Ocean swells crash and lose their vigour at the reef and the bay stays relatively calm. There is a pub, a general store, a servo and that’s about it. This is consistent with many small coastal towns west of Adelaide. But the pubs are usually inviting, the general stores have essentials and nearly all the servos offer a better-then-expected range of meals and supplies as well. I am not saying that there are many bargains to be found and I am not saying that there are exceptional culinary delights in these places, but you can always get fresh fish & chips and all the extras that can accompany that basic fare, like scallops and prawns and squid. Further, there will be pizzas and sandwiches and hamburgers etc and they may even offer various Indian or Asian dishes reflecting the owner’s nationality. I have found these side-of-the-road or small-town stores to generally be better than expected. (Or have my standards slipped over the last 9 months?) (Sooz: I think it may be the latter, except for the Indian food we got in Streaky Bay. That was delicious!)
Elliston has a rather interesting coastal drive which is only 14 km in length but there are many stops at clifftop vistas where talented locals have sculptures of all sorts of things, made of all sorts of materials. Example, it may be a pair of dolphins riding a wave but the whole thing might be made of chicken wire and done very, very well I might add. Seeing stuff like this makes a man feel rather inadequate. How come I cannot make say, a two metre sculpture of a sea-eagle out of toenail clippings, or something like that? When I ask Sooz this question she replies that I have talents in ‘other areas’. I never pursue this any further or ask her to elaborate in case I don’t like the response or worse, in case she stumbles and stutters to come up with a good answer. (Sooz: 
)
VENUS BAY
VENUS BAY is not much bigger than Elliston, but boy, does it leave Elliston for dead regarding its natural offerings. It’s on the shores of a lovely, large inlet that has dramatic & weathered cliffs at its entrance. There is a walk you can do along the cliffs and its very spectacular, but sad in parts. There are a three nicely done commemorative memorials on the trail to honour the lives of people that perished nearby. The thing is, all three were young lads aged between 17 and 23. Two were mates who died together in a boating accident near the entrance, and one was a young fella who fell from the cliffs. And these were both quite recent accidents.
Venus Bay is a fisherman’s paradise. Mostly a whiting paradise. I love whiting to eat. As in nearly all these little coastal towns, there is the obligatory pier or jetty (what is the difference between a pier and a jetty?) and we had our fair share of luck there. Sooz excelled herself with her newly found fishing pursuits by landing a number of squid over the two days we were here. A couple of them were a really good size too. I managed to land what they call ‘salmon trout’ but they were small and I returned them to their watery home. Susan’s crab net was put to work and a dozen or so crabs were caught but were all returned as they were not the edible blue swimmer or sand crabs, but rather angry looking rock crabs. Many of the visitors at the caravan park had tinnies and they regularly ‘bagged out’ after being out on the water for a few hours, meaning they had caught their limit of whiting (which is 10). Some of the park’s visitors come and stay for 2 or 3 or 4 weeks, and mostly just go fishing. If you are keen to have a fish in a nice, sheltered, secluded environment, I would recommend Venus Bay as a destination. But it can get windy, like so much of the SA & VIC coast (the Windy Bottom syndrome 😊 If you don’t know what this means, refer to the previous Blog post) (Sooz: Mind you, we never managed to catch the elusive whiting. Ah well. Perhaps we will come back with a boat one day.)
BAIRD BAY
The drive from Venus Bay to Streaky Bay included a pit-stop at Sooz’s request. A dot-of-a-town called BAIRD BAY (population of 3 ….. true!) that is 35 km off the main road offers a sea lion and dolphin swimming experience. It was a breezy, cool, grey-ish day, the water temp was only 17 degrees, and the organisers made a point of advising that the boat that would transport them through the rough, chilly waters was equipped with a shark deterrent feature. The seven paying passengers were made up of 6 females – the one male was a 10-year-old boy who had no choice! I am still trying to work out what this unbalanced attendance formula equated to. Was it that females are hardier souls that are prepared to take on rather ordinary climatic conditions and overlook the possibility of being eaten in waters that have a notorious reputation for the sake of a close encounter with sea lions, or are men just smarter and will wait for a friendlier opportunity? (Sooz: Hmmm…wonder why Leigh didn’t want to go?) I had a lovely 7km walk along the bay and cliffs over the ensuing 3 hours and thus I will now handball the commentary of the seal experience to Sooz:
It was great! Yes, it was breezy, the sea was not calm and the water was cold. Nonetheless, it was an incredible experience. (Leigh got the numbers wrong –there was a Frenchman on board. So, there were two males. 😊) We were warned it might be a bit rough, and that, the sea lions might be late to the party, hence we started with the dolphins. We sped out to the entrance of the bay, encountered a few dolphins, and got in the water. What a blast! There was anywhere from 2 to 12 dolphins at a time swimming right up to us, under us, and then speed off. They were super curious if you held your breath and duck dived down with them. At times, everywhere you looked there were dolphins. We got in and out of the water a few times, but all up, we must have been in the water for over an hour. It really was amazing to be so closely interacting with these cheeky yet graceful animals.
We then went to the sea lion colony. The were all still rather sleepy and inactive, and the seas were getting bigger. We hung around on the boat for a while eating bikkies, drinking hot chocolate, and trying to stay warm. Then a few jumped in and so did we. The sea lions had zero interest in us, so it was a bit hard to get up close. Plus, they are FAST. I mean supersonic. While they left us to frolic further away, we were swimming only meters from shore where we watched at least 8 pups play (only about a month old). It was magical. Again, we were in and out of the water, but this time it was due to huge currents and waves more than anything. The two males did end up giving a great show – they were wrestling, not caring about the spectators at all, allowing us to get a better, up-close view. Amazing!
STREAKY BAY
STREAKY BAY is yet another very small town on the shores of a large, protected bay. There are so many locations like this along the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula. And like so many others, has a strong fishing-based economy and the local jetty is a gathering & meeting place. We stayed about 5km out of town in a caravan park that was only developed 6 years ago that has direct beach access. We spent a day taking the Cape Bauer circuit drive which is about 35km in length. (Sooz: Yes – we spent most of the day travelling 35kms – we stop a lot.) This loop skirts along spectacular headlands and cliffs. We seem to be getting a taste of what is ahead of us regarding the famous cliffs that line a large section of the Nullarbor. One of the stops on this drive is to listen and witness the ‘Whistling Rocks and Blowholes’. The Southern Ocean swell was large at the time – I would guess at about 5 metres, but the tide was low. This didn’t prevent us from being provided with a pretty good presentation of both features – the whistling and blowing. The large, ragged and crumbling cliffs we were standing on have a mixture of limestone and sandstone and certain chemical reactions occur when water (rain & seawater) enters through cracks causing the dissolving of sections of the rocks. This results in natural hollow tubes that have air and water forced through them from the force of the swell. Now we have all been to blowholes before but these ones are some 20 or 30 meters back from the cliff edges and some 30 meters or more above the waterline. And some of the holes are only 10 or 20 cm in diameter. This is different to other blowholes I have seen. But what a noise they made as an orchestra! From 50 meters away, it sounded like some giant, horrible, subterranean creature heavily wheezing and getting ready to emerge to devour any living creature nearby. The combination of large, crashing waves against the cliff bases and the noise and spectacle of the blowholes was mesmerising and it was easy to stand on the viewing platform and let half an hour wash by. I must mention that the western side of the Eyre Peninsula has a notorious history of shark attack fatalities. At the local jetty is a plaque commemorating people lost at sea be it a boating accident or a sailing ship washed onto rocks a century ago. There were more than 50 names on the plaque and a number of them became shark food, including 3 people in the last 20 years. It was here that we heard the media reports of another fatality at Elliston where we had been only days before and not far from there, Sooz had her snorkelling experience with seals & dolphins!
CEDUNA
I was more toey than a Roman sandal on the way to CEDUNA. Reason being that this was the last town of any magnitude before one begins the 1200km crossing of the Nullarbor. That is the gap between Ceduna and Norseman, and I want it to go smoothly. (Sooz: I tried to remind Leigh that he had already towed the caravan 17,000kms, what’s another 1200?) We plan on it taking 3 days/2 nights to get across. Ceduna is nothing to write home about (or write a blog about?) It’s on a big bay where there are lots of fish (more about that in a moment) but the town itself is rather drab. There is no pub of any character. Matter of fact, there is only one pub and that is a bland, reasonably modern thing which makes one wonder where the old pub is/was. Perhaps the new-ish one now stands where the old one did – just over the road from the town jetty. There is a significant Aboriginal presence on the streets and some of the sad issues that you hear and read about seem to exist here. There was often several hanging around near the pub and in the few days we were there we witnessed a few ‘incidents’ amongst this group. Nonetheless, give them a handline and watch them go. We watched a mob catch large trevally off the jetty on a couple of different days. These fish were around 80cm and would have weight 5+kg. They are a powerful fish and to pull one in on a handline is some feat. There were about 8 members of the mob – mostly female – and between them they walked off the jetty with at least 20 of these fish after a couple of hours. As mentioned, that happened two days running. The ridiculous thing about this is that a number of whities were standing near them, using the same bait and trying their best to land some of the same fish and couldn’t get one! Not one.
It was here in Ceduna that an old mate from Melbourne – CHOOK – joined us in his campervan. He was on a pilgrimage to Kalgoorlie and we both agreed that crossing the Nullarbor with another party would be a good thing.
NEXT UPDATE – ACROSS THE NULLARBOR!
COFFIN BAY CARAVAN PARK 6/10 SOOZ: 6.5/10 – Just for the Emus!
ELLISTON CARAVAN PARK 6.5/10 SOOZ: 7/10
VENUS BAY BEACHFRONT TOURIST PARK 7/10
STREAKY BAY ISLANDS CARAVAN PARK 8.5/10 (with 5 star shower blocks!) SOOZ: 9/10
CEDUNA SHELLY BEACH CARAVAN PARK : 7/10
Is there another word other than simply , JEALOUS. What a great adventure.
The seafood you are indulging in . Wow. Keep it coming you two.
Mairin and I are in Sicily, Italy
I just had a snorkel and the biggest fish I discovered was 2cm long 🤨. Nevertheless it’s a beautiful coastal line ..
keep well A&M. X
Love seeing the updates…. Keep enjoying this beautiful country!