Coffin Bay to Ceduna 14 Feb

14 February       

Thought we should check out our surroundings and decided to drive around Kellidie Bay National Park, took all sorts of tracks and ended up somewhere overlooking the other side of Coffin Bay, Colman thought he could find some oysters in the wild but only got wet.  We ended up on Farm Beach for a couple of hours and went for a huge walk along the beach,  we were parked on the beach and when we saw every other four wheel drive leaving we thought we should do the same.  Got to the exit point and saw a guy stuck in the sand, we had not let down our tyres so Colman decided to gun it, and got us out first go. (I’m so proud of him – sorry in-joke!!). Drove around the area a bit and it was most spectacular and rugged as always.  On the way home we saw Jaspar the friendly ghost, a tree trunk that some local had painted and it looked just like the real thing, what you see in the country!!!  Had 2 dozen oysters to celebrate when we got back, what a life. Peter the Harley rider turned up with a campervan and a hug red-back spider sticker on the side facing our door, great, we were not going to be good neighbours, then he played Bryan Adams and I kind of forgave him.  Tom and wife came over for a drink and a chat – happy hour kind of thing to do!

15 February

Took it very easy and prepared for Ros & Stephan who came over for dinner.  Had a great night with those two, poor Stephan, though his little Mazda 6 was a four wheel drive and almost took out the undercarriage and didn’t live it down!  A little bit into the night we worked out the whole situation and decided that Stephan was actually the slave, he thought he need one but we decided he was one! All very funny and those two are now known as Roslyn & The Slave.  A very good night including some very dodgy dance videos that some girls had told us to download on the IPhone earlier that week!

16 February

Took Momo up to Dunns electrical to have the Jake breaks checked and to also have the generator looked at once again.  We went into town and had breakfast at Del Geornos, did a bit of wandering, did an assorted shop to prepare for the west. Then met Toni & Lee for dinner at the Ming Inn and met three of their friends also including one with a diamond in her front tooth, a lovely lady who did mountain bike racing (and turned out to be a friend of Josel) as well as Kiwi who flew spotter planes for the tuna boats. This was followed by coffee at the Lincoln where your one with the diamond in her tooth left us because her toy boy was waiting for her outside, etc, etc, etc!!!  A very interesting night was had and it was great to catch up with Lee & Toni before we left, would have been great to have a chat with Kiwi but others had more important things to talk about!  Decided to overnight at Billy Lights Point, it was an RV friendly free camp overlooking Proper Bay and a few other vans had taken the opportunity to do so, Colman had a chat with a couple of them, I wasn’t so inclined!

17 February

Did big shop, last stop before the big expensive outback, Susie petrol at $1.43 per litter and Momo diesel at $1.53 per litre, drove Momo back down to Coffins then came back up to Lincoln to go to  “Church” with Petar, Josell, Remy, Yoland.  There was a band and we met some guy who was all of 2 meters (according to me) and 6 foot 8 according to the non-metric people, (you work it out)who could wrap his leg around the back of his head, interesting young man, who was also responsible for making us get up and do Nutbush City  Limits!!.  We also bumped into the ‘Slaves’ wives sister (insider joke – sorry), Colman was the DD so he drove home and I had the hangover!

18 February

Back up to Lincoln for the Farmers Market, in hindsight ‘should have known better’. Popped in to say Hello and Good Bye to Roslyn & The Slave, went down to have some dodgy coffee and a nice pastry of some description.  Then rang Sandy & Ike to work out when they were coming around for dinner, unfortunately we had forgotten that we had arranged to go driving down at Gunya beach beforehand, they would be round at 3pm.  We met up with Toni and told her we couldn’t stick around because we had messed up our social calendar, headed back to the car and met Vera (Petar’s mother) on the way and said our goodbyes.  Arrived back at the campsite, where Josel (who was down for a 50^th birthday called past) and then Sandy, Ike, Jennni & Geoff, Malcolm & Pam arrived.  Had coffee and headed off to Gunya beach where we drove in the soft sand and tried very hard not to get stuck, which we didn’t.  Back for a BBQ and had a very lovely evening, most left about 8ish but Sandy & Ike stayed till after midnight.  Had a lovely time and great chat, we got invited to the Alice Springs run in July for 30 days– I can’t wait!! It was something both of us really wanted to do and now we will be going, start organising!

19 February

Organised for leaving tomorrow

20 February

Did the Oyster town walk from the campsite up to the lookout and back down along the bay, took us about 2 hours and most of it was inland and hot.  We did however find a ‘snake’ made up of hairy mollies (for those none Irish they are hairy caterpillars), they had basically formed an orderly column and were wandering across the road, and a mandatory photo was taken.  Now about Oyster town, oyster farming was first established in the area in 1848 and by 1849 there were up to 30 cutters dredging the area for native oysters, by the late 1800 the town had died due to over harvesting!!.  We also saw the ‘Old Well’ a hole with a bit of corrugation covering it which stems from 1866, some remains of cottages from a similar time, really couldn’t pick any part of the cottages- but it said so in the brochure therefor it must be it.  The grand finally of the tour was the rosemary bush planted in 1850 and now (they say) over 30 meters wide! It was exciting and Colman ended up picking some for me, he is just so romantic!! (my hero, by bubs – sorry ‘in’ joke which some will get), it was quite pretty – if you like that sort of thing, we used it on our lamb chops a couple of days later, very exotic!!  Went to get some oysters and as they were busy and we were ‘locals’ I was allowed to pick my own out of the huge crate that they had brought in this morning, these guys hadn’t been sorted so for $7.00 per dozen I could pick whatever size I wanted, I was told if I could open them without the knife I could have as many as I wanted – hmph.. .  It was the first time we saw the ‘oyster machine’ sorting.  It’s a huge conveyor belt and someone stands at the beginning and takes out all the obvious ‘deviants’,  they then head up the conveyor belt and get rotated  around a tub grader with holes in it.  The holes are all different sizes and the appropriate oysters fall out and into their own appropriate baskets – cocktail, bistro, small, medium etc.  I had also learnt the difference between Pacific and Angasi , the quote is that is “ Pacific oysters are the Chardonnay of the wine world then an Angasi oyster  is the Shiraz”, we tried them both and they were right, I can’t explain other than that, if you want to be impressive (or a prat - you pick) next time you buy oyster ask if they have Angasi, because they “simply are the classier oyster!!”.  By God, we have become oyster snobs too (what next?), but Dahrling I really do prefer the Angasi oyster, they do have so much more texture & flavour then ‘those other’!!  Went to local butcher who was from Willunga and had learnt the art of small goods from a German, no more to be said about the quality of the wurst! We finally left Coffins for the Cummins Memorial Lookout which was a rest area right next to the Cummins memorial, yet another drowning in this area. We climbed up the hill and went out onto the cliffs, spectacular and rugged, well worth the effort.  We found an area full of cairns (people piling rocks on top of each other type of thing) so we decided we needed to build one too.  And it was the best one in the area, with the best view and all.

21 February

Left Cummins to Venus Bay and found the free camp right between Venus Bay and Port Kenny, we had checked out Venus Bay and although it was very pretty it was also packed and very small.  We decided to have a shandy at Venus Bay General store, and although they sold alcohol it was not a pub, you have to buy a stubby, a bottle of lemonade and they give you a glass so you can make it yourself.  It was lovely just sitting there overlooking the bay so we thought we would have a second one, then headed off to set up camp.  Didn’t do much after all that excitement.

22 February

Did some geo-caching, first stop was the grave of Patrick Reidy which was in the middle of nowhere, in fact it was just like driving along a dirt road, then the geo-cache says stop, climb over a stretch of barbed wire, over a sand hill and there it was a grave with a steel railing around it, it must have been a local who put the cache there as you would have never known it was there otherwise.  It gave us another reason to appreciate this geo-caching,  A little Pot of Gold was a Geo-cache at the entrance to a bush resort called Coddle park, we went for a look at this ‘resort’ and it may have been someone’s  dream one time but is now very run down.  Decided to head back to the Colton cemetery to check out the grave of the very first Greek settler to SA, he arrived here in 1822 at age 20 and his grave stone is both in greek and english.  This was closely followed by the Bramfield cemetery which included the grave of a Mr William Tree a local land owner and shearer.  Apparently he was a little paranoid about getting his epitaph right that he had his headstone shipped out from England before he died to make sure all the details were correct.  And for your reading pleasure and education that would have been 2052 in fifteen and one half days or the other statistic – 6762 sheep shorn in one season, something to be proud of I guess.  We did pass Nowhere else on our way around but decided not to stop as there was nothing else to see!!  Talia caves were very spectacular; they included the Tub, which was really a sink hole with an entrance to the sea some 30 meters deep and 50 meters across & the Woolshed a large cavern which lead to a cave at the end all carved out by the motion of the ocean!!  On the whole if you are ever down this way it is well worth a look.  Colman decided he needed to climb down into the Tub via some tree trunk that some wonderful individual had carved steps into and at the bottom you got to look out to see, I saw the photos!!  Back home and down to Venus jetty to do some fishing, it was cold, the tide wasn’t just flowing it was racing out and the fish were down below laughing.  Home for port and warm up!

23 February

Venus Bay is a funny little place; the bay is basically completely surrounded with only the smallest opening going out into the Great Aussie Bight.  This makes the waters very calm, as long as the tide isn’t turning and a lot of the beaches (of which there are not many) are very shallow so it seems to be very popular with families (luckily no school holidays at the moment) We did the cliff top walk which was the usual rugged and spectacular scenery and then saw dolphins, there must have been fifty or more in the pod and they were having a great time, we spent ages watching them.  We then decided to build another cairn, which Colman then broke and then we headed off to do some more geo-caching.  The first thing we found was a little goat track down onto the beach which you would need to be a local to find and which took you onto this spectacular and calm beach.  We’re getting addicted to this because it takes you to the most unusual and out of the way places, the next one took us to a grave on its own in the middle of some sand dunes (and we all know I love them) of a local who had died back in 1880 at the age of 40, there was a lovely epitaph (they like them in this area).  The good thing is that if there is any background information it can be found on the geo-cache site – we’re addicted!  We then looked for another on and found our first travel bug (Tristar RG6K6E).  Basically this is a ‘token’ a lovely stainless steel star about 5 cm across which someone, somewhere has placed on the road to travel via the caches.  This one was from Germany and had landed in Perth, come across the Nullarbor and was now with us, not sure yet where we plan to drop it but it will need to be a worthy spot.  After all that excitement we headed off to Port Kenny (I wouldn’t rush to add it to my next itinerary) and decided the mandatory shandy at Port Kenny Hotel was required.  Chatted to a few of the locals, as well as fellow tourists who advised us which caravan park to stay at in Ceduna and which ones to avoid.  Apparently the choice is only 1, the others are either dodgy or covered in barb wire with security cameras and all sorts, hmm,  I wonder what type of barb wire exactly!?! Back to the campsite to organise for tomorrow when I heard the giggling of female voices, Colman was pottering in his shed so they headed over to him.  Turns out there were 3 French girls who were travelling from Shepparton to Caruthers in a car with no air-conditioning.  They asked if they could stay around us to which we agreed (Colman was actually very excited by the prospect, one of the 3 was very pretty, but being from Paris she had the matching mouth and attitude, he would not get away with anything here).  We ended up inviting them around for a glass of Australian champagne and some chocolates and had a very pleasant evening.  Helene was from Paris and she seemed quite worldly and outspoken, Anais was from Toulon and she was a bit more down to earth and very intelligent, Audrey was the naivest of the three.  She made us laugh when she asked if there is a moon in Australia, she hadn’t seen it as yet and didn’t know if we had one down here too!!  All up they were lovely girls, spoke very good English and obviously were tough to pull off what they were doing.  We invited them for coffee the next day and they said they needed to be up early to cross the Nullarbor, we told them we were early risers too so all good.

24 February

Well we got up, had 2 coffees, washed the dishes, had a shower, had breakfast and at this point is was 9.30 and not a thing was stirring over in their tent, 2 slept in the car and one slept in a tiny little tent, temperature had reached about 30 degrees and eventually we saw movement.  They came over, had coffee and after lots of hugs and horn tooting they hit the road.  We got ready and left Port Kenny to head towards Streaky Bay.  Arrived, set up and straight down to the beach.  After we came back up we saw that Peter (the Harley rider from Coffins) was there sitting with a couple with a rig called Cuddles & Co, the people attached to the rig were Bob & Sheryl  & a dog called Rhana (I think) who was more a child then a dog).  We had a chat and were invited down for drinks later, which we did, as well as supper, an entertaining night was had, all very nice and interesting people. Cuddles (I needed to call him Sir Cuddles for the first half an hour – protocol apparently) was a musician and they travelled around playing wherever they could, tending to follow the music festivals around Oz. Peter was from Townsville, his surname was Wilmington so he had visited the place and was most disappointed by it!! Anyway we will very likely catch up again in WA as that is where he was heading, if not we were told to contact him if we ever pass through Townsville.

25 February

Today we were going to take it easy, and we all know the saying ‘Best laid plans of men and mice’. Had breakfast at the campsite kiosk and got talking to a couple about Ceduna, we had heard all sorts, the massive barb wire around the campground together with the electronic sliding gate.  The surveillance cameras up and down the street and the fact that at night they (not sure who!!) turn on the loud speaker with a kind of wailing sound to keep the “locals” off the street.  It was also a dry zone and you would get harassed if you had alcohol, you couldn’t buy cask wine (yes, sadly it is getting to this stage, “store more, break less” and now to top it off this couple had been there yesterday and her comment was that “It was 4 hours of her life she would never get back”! Great…  It was a hot day so we thought we would head into Streaky and check out the town, an hour later and we had thoroughly achieved just that, and with the heat decided an air-condition car was the way to go, so we thought we should drive and check out Ceduna ourselves.  Headed off expecting the worst and guess what, always form your own decisions.  We did laugh at the ‘barb wire enclosed fence, obviously these guys had never seen a barb wire enclosure, most of the wire was hidden behind great walls of creepers and climbers, we eventually found a couple of cameras but –yes- there was an electronic gate!!!  We did find some casks at the bottle shop later on and we never got hassled by anyone, still undecided on the wailing sirens bit, will check it out when we get there.  Drove down to the Shelly Beach caravan park we were planning to stay, looked lovely ad booked  a site, then decided to head back to Streaky and visit the local attractions as well as do some geo-caching along the way.  Stopped at Smokey Bay but the oyster barns were closed and Colman point blank refused to do the geo-cache cause it was on a main road, so we headed off to the next one at Acraman Creek  national park.  The corrugations were amazing, and eventually after taking a few wrong turns we got there.  It was hot as hell, there was a huge beach in front of us and it was covered thigh deep in seaweed.  One thing I do not like at all (really at all) is walking through seaweed, I persevered and got out into sand, so far so good! After that it went pear-shaped! More seaweed, sunk deeper, millions of flies, lost signal to geo-cache, overheating, didn’t bring water from car, more seaweed, full scale panic attack and burst into tears!! Poor Colman, got me back to the car, poured water over me and calmed me down, right I was over this and I wanted to go home!  Left the beach, got lost, no map (were actually never planning on doing any of this today), ended up in sand dunes, turned around, ended up in some derelict  homestead with lots of dogs, no people and lots of cross bow bolts, luckily I got signal on my iPhone and got a map and got us out! Now I really wanted to go home, go far a swim and relax.  See beginning of story about men & mice.  Got back and headed down to beach and went for a swim, on way back Colman talked to some guy about crabbing who then offered him some fish-heads as bait. SO.. had to go up to get bag for fish heads, as we got back the neighbours handed us a bowl with 3 crabs they had too many of, had to get bag down for fish heads, needed to put crabs into a large pot, needed to get sea water so needed to find a bucket and then need to cook these crabs, the neighbour offered to cook them for us if we got him water & salt! Had to socialise with them – 1 very nice woman, nice husband and 1 dodgy couple because they were kindly cooking our crabs, but all I really wanted to do was get a flagon of white wine and hibernate – which I must say did happen after the crabs and social frivolities were done, well – lets just say I Left!

26 February

Petar & Desi arrived around lunch and we went to the Streaky Hotel for lunch and then just sat and chatted.  Petar had gotten me addicted to Gin & Tonics and Desi had brought up a kilo of limes for us so I would survive the wilderness that is Ceduna.  Petar had work to do so we spent some time with Desi then did our own things and came back to get a lesson from Petar on how to make the perfect G&T, followed by several G&T’s.  Jenni & Geoff arrived late afternoon just as Petar  Desi were leaving to go to their do, we had coffee, bubbly which then turned into dinner.  A lovely evening was spent!

27 February

Home

28 February

Lana invited us to go catch razor fish with her, Ron, Heather, Trevor, which we did, another thing we have learnt but I did have a few issues with cleaning the things, you could catch 25 per person or 75 per group so we had about 20ish.  You clean them then and there, Colman chopped the razor shell in half and Lana showed me how to get the scallop out and kindly did them all for me.  Did the Cape Bauer Loop which we had done with my mother and then decided with all the excitement of hunting & gathering we needed to buy another crab net and went to the Streaky Bay jetty crabbing.  Asked 2 young kids who were hanging around the jetty where they thought was a good place and ended up getting a lesson in how to throw the net, how to catch the crabs, where to look for them and the best places to get them.  We got 5 but I couldn’t really do much to them – way too much like a spider so I just hauled them in a handed the net over to Colman.  Apparently you should not take female crabs even if they are the correct size, and you should not take anything smaller than 11 cm from the sides by the pincers.  Then had a Shandy at the Streaky Bay Hotel, apparently the cool room had conked it so they had no beer on tap so it came out of a bottle, not sure if this can rate in our Shandy register. 

29 February

Decided we need to go back to Murphy’s Haystacks and do the geocache and then headed down to Calca and check out the historic township, the cemetery and the old school, was a biggish town once, now there is nothing.  Then on to Point Labatt to see the sea lions, difference between a seal & a sea lion, seals have ear flaps and sea lions have little feety like back flippers that they can walk on (now don’t quote me on this my memory is a bit dodgy but I think that is what the sign said), apparently it is the only permanent colony on the Australian mainland.  Again more spectacular scenery all around, continued around to Sceale Bay (pronounced Scale), did more geo-caching, and then ended up doing the Westall Way Loop Drive, definitely the better of the two drives.  Again the most magnificent scenery, it is amazing how rugged this part of the world is.  Colman had heard that there was good fishing at the Granites so we stopped there, ran into the neighbours from the campsite (the 2 guys).  Colman and I headed off to find our little spot when we noticed about 5 surfers out on the waves, brave or stupid, not sure which, funny thing was there was this old mix of all sorts of dogs just sitting there patiently on a rock with the waves crashing around him watching his master surf.  Such devotion, can’t see me doing that!!. Not that Colman would surf so it’s all good! After all that came back and relaxed.

01 March

Gathered razor Fish, drove (!!) the Historic walk around Streaky Bay, shopped and had lunch at Moceans, brilliant food which was good because we had been trying to come here for days now and each evening for dinner it was closed.  We then headed off to Smokey Bay Rest Area Rest area because Colman wanted to fit the air conditioner into the bedroom without getting helpful hints and suggestions from all and sundry around us.  Relaxed and spent the afternoon doing our Razor fish and dissecting the crabs we had caught a couple of days ago

02 March –0 4 March

Colman fitted air conditioner and I caught up on emails, photos, diary and general stuff that needed doing

Love Momo&Co