It's a Long Way Home

We have just stopped at Bordertown for the night after about eight and a half hours driving. No photos so if that is all you come for, save your time!

We left early, which given daylight saving was pretty close to dawn. Drove up though Whyalla where we saw some of the iron or mining at the other end of the range that we saw at Iron Knob. They appear to be called the South Middle Back Ranges. With the one on the end a multitude of colours as it is being dug out. It is called Ironstone Hill, Further north is the Iron Baron and further again Iron Knob. Just about here we broke through the clouds into sunlight. We could see the container ships off Whyalla on the glowing water of the gulf.

Drove right through, it is pretty scrappy saltbush country around Whyalla. Stopped for Morning tea at Port Augusta after we had left the Eyre peninsula as we crossed the bridge in town.

After various fluid changeovers and a change of driver we headed out again with the southern Flinders on our left. Nothing much as a highlight.....we made sure we did not stop at Snowton.....look it up......we watched the huge line of windmills on the hill near the start of the Yorke Peninsula. The highlight though was the amusingly named Bumbunga Lake......I just automatically put a pause after the m. It is gloriously pink and leaves the Kaniva Pink Lake for dead. We did not stop though many did.

We stopped at Two Wells for lunch and a driver change. It is named Two Wells because it has two wells....natural ones.....that helped open up the area. They had a rose garden/park around the wells and joy of joy a stand up picnic table. When you have been in the car for a stretch standing helps straighten out the old bones.

Onward around the eastern suburbs of Adelaide and over the Adelaide Hills where the subie struggled. Nothing much of note apart from the huge line of cars coming back....many with their Crows regalia flying proud. We stopped at Coonalpyn for a final change of driver and a look at the Wheat Silo murals and had a small stretch into Bordertown where we will rest, eat and sleep.

Melbourne tomorrow

Grand Final Day............

........dawned rather nicely.......

We were not planning on doing much......a couple of walks to check out the the sand and the birds, like we did yesterday

 

We decide to do the swamp walk.....OK,OK , the boardwalk over the mangroves and samphire and salt creek......except by the time we started the clouds had rolled in

and the birds were leaving........

and the trees were dead........

kind of like our enthusiasm for touring. We hunkered down for some reading whilst enjoying a view of the ocean.....a book for Marjan and a paper, the first one in a month, for me. I am not sure what Marjan learned from her book, I learnt that nothing much is different in the world. I did enjoy reading that Cory Bernardi was responsible for lifting the fundraising efforts of a school where everyone, including ....Oh horror.....boys, wore dresses to school to raise funds for educating African girls. Corey's outrage meant that an effort that hoped to raise $900 ended up raising $275,000

I did eventually rouse myself enough to go out and have a look at Redbanks....another little beach with very flaky looking reddish sandy cliffs.....

Soon it was time for the footy and Marjan and I headed in to the local pub to share the space in front of the telly with a mostly male audience with names like Thursday, T-Bone and Baldy. I entered the sweep and did badly, though the young guy next to me won the half time sweep, $110, much to the enjoyment of his girlfriend who proceeded to text Mum, Nanna, Auntie Joan and the lady from the servo and perhaps some others and then felt the need to tell her boyfriend what they each thought of him winning the sweep........the mood got a little more lively as we watched Adelaide get trounced.....it was either that or cry.......a young woman barracking for Richmond decided at game end to give the only other Richmond supporter, a bloke about my vintage, a huge hug and kiss which caused great hilarity.

As I walked home with more beer in me than I normally have, a number of people came out of their beach shacks, realised there was more to the world than the TV, made a regretful comment about the game to me and moved on.

Grand Final Day in Arno Bay.......

We are not pubbing this evening....a quiet steak at home, a pack and early to bed for a day of driving tomorrow. We hope to make Border Town and then a quick run into Melbourne on Monday, ready for normality, or what passes for it, on Tuesday.

A Final Goodbye to the West Coast

So we were leaving Tumby Bay and decided to have one last fling on the west coast. A quick dash across the Braten Way would get us across to the cliffs near Mt Hope to hopefully have another look at the Eastern Osprey.

The first part of the trip was in glorious light, up into the hills, with the canola fields looking magnificent. The editor, however has banned canola photography for a while. Past Cummins it started to drizzle, but only along the road, it was clear and sunny either side of us but a strip of about 2-4Km  running east-west along the highway was under dark clouds. The rain even got to Melbourne rain levels for a bit. We were the rain gods. The clouds loved us and were watering us.

Once we reached the coast and started driving north a little we got out from under the worst of it but it was still overcast. The Osprey though were still at home. The female was looking for food whilst the male sat on the nest. These are in B&W as the grey sky made it hard to do colour photos justice.

This time Mum did not find any food, but she did manage to spook the seagulls and keep them at bay.

Eventually she needed a rest.

Then back out to look for food again.

No luck. She came home with talons empty.

The odd visitor had a look .

And eventually dad got up and had a go.

Dad needed to use the facilities.

The seagulls were really pesky.

So they both settled in to watch the clutch of three eggs. They are clearly visible in the last shot.

We were there for about an hour and I took about 1,000 photos. I could easily have stayed all day, even though the cliffs got really scary when the osprey were above me and a gust of wind blew. I just felt like I was falling.

We drove back...initially through west coast vistas....salt lake and distant hill behind the grain fields. We stopped off at Cummins which is a lovely little town. Some of the East Coast towns need to have a look at how it is done. The only downer for Cummins is the B&B named Passing Wind. We felt they were either catering to a market very much like ours, or had not thought through the name.



....... and then through lovely rolling canola crops......the ban is still on......and on to Arno Bay where the weather is fine but the wind is not merely passing.....

We are thinking a slack day by the water, a cultural immersion of a SA pub on grand final day before our two day drive home.

Just Driving Around

There was a bit of wind and a lot of cloud about this morning so we decided to make it a driving day. We would drive around and have quick looks at some inland spots. As we left town the nankeen kestrel wished us well.

The first bit of our drive was a loop around the hills north west of Tumby, through the now defunct town of Stokes, where all that remained was the church.....very much in the style of local buildings.......then on through some wonderful countryside.......very rich agricultural land again, like through the Koppio hills. Not quite so luscious though. Even though there is water, as evidenced by the odd running creek, it seem a little drier that the Koppio hills, and there are not quite as many big gum trees. So how many photos of canola fields have I taken.....many is the answer.

So to break it up can anyone tell me what this crop is?

There should be signs.....right? Marjan and I have agreed that we will vote for the party that agrees to provide more informational signs for old, boring tourists like us. What crop is planted; How high above sea level we are; what nationality settled this area (Germans by the way); when did the local school shut down; how much rainfall do they get right here as opposed to Koppio. The locals have started this off a bit, each property seems to have a sign with a name of the property and the names of the people who own/work it.........Cookaleechie Farm...Keith and Margaret and John and Betty and Scotty and Fluffy.

Just beautiful countryside. We stopped for a bit at a place called Moody Tank. This was similar to the Wudinna and Minippa rocks further north. The railways had put a little wall around this granite outcrop and a tank to collect the water, with a roof for more collection and reduce evaporation. This water was then used to the railways between 1913 and 1969. See it is these sorts of signs we yearn for on other sites.

Worked our way though the town of Ungarra, which advertised toilets, but they were only there for those with keys, everything else in town appeared shut. Ungarra means “lots of water” in the local aboriginal dialect, apparently.......it could just as easily mean “up your jumper sport”, and the town was situated near a creek, which in this part of the world looks a lot like a salt flat. Back down through the hills to the coastal highway.

Up again into the hills further north. We travelled though mallee dune country to get there but Cleve was situated at the foot of a range of hills. We drove through as we wanted to get to the highest hill in Eyre. This was near the town of Darke Peak, which appeared to be a pub (real), a pub (fake) and a football ground. It was situated between the Darke Range, a pretty range of hills about 10k long, and Carapee Hill, the tallest hill in the Eyre Peninsula and the second largest granite monolith on the Eyre Peninsula.....second best.....we ignored it and climbed to the Federation Hill Lookout at the end of the Darke Range to look south over the peninsula............farm country as far as the eye could see..........no hills as far as the eye could see......Silos back in the towns. (broadly defined) we had passed on the way from Cleve. Behind us the hills provided 10k of rugged forested land completely surrounded by flat farmland.

Back to Cleve for lunch. It presents very nicely as a neat, tidy town with well maintained buildings. It services the farms in the area and is the centre of its own little municipality. Interestingly the bakery was very much in the old (very old) country town tradition and we declined to have a coffee...it could have been as bad as the Sea Lake episode. One of the highlights in Cleve is Ticklebelly Hill, no I did not make that up. Apparently during WW2 this hill was permanently manned 24x7 with lookouts for enemy aircraft.......none were spotted.

So I said earlier Cleve was sitting at the base of a range of hills, Ticklebelly being merely the first and most humorously named. We drove around those hills, again with lovely vistas of the surrounding farms, agricultural and wind We tried to go into a Conservation Park for a walk, but the lack of signage.....a constant annoyance at parks etc........meant we drove into a quarry and gave up the idea of a walk in the lovely wooded hills. The signs have been a problem throughout the Eyre, but particularly on the East coast. We have now spotted two separate signs pointing to local attractions in the completely opposite direction, we have also seen many signs that have obviously been pulled down. It makes you wonder if the locals object to sharing their beauty spots.

We drove down out of the hills again to the coast. To the town of Cowell which again presented prettily with lovely buildings,which again had a very dodgy looking and smelling bakery and which seemed to have situated itself around a mangrove swamp which it was trying to turn into a tourist attraction.

We were discussing the differences between east and west coast on our drive back to Tumby. The east coast seems to us to be heavily oriented towards agriculture and commercial fishing. It's town are therefore service towns servicing those industries with the odd holidaying facility built around some glorious beaches. The west coast seems to be more marginal agriculturally and has turned itself into a more serious attraction for out-of-towners. It plays up its rugged coast and the Wild West feel and makes sure that tourists are welcome with a clean, unlocked toilet and a decent cup of coffee.  

Birds and Bays

Tumby Bay faces east, so I got up early to shoot the sunrise. It was almost directly off the main pier. The water was much calmer and the town totally silent apart from the gentle lapping of the waves. Very peaceful.

Whilst I was up I wandered down to the swamp/mangrove boardwalk to see some birds. Mostly it was New Holland Honey Eaters and they chased away the other little birds. Not much in the way of water birds. Perhaps later in the day.

I rewarded my early rising with a cooked breakfast and a catch of of Champions League highlights on the pay TV. We still managed to get going on our proper morning outing by 8.

We started on the headland near Tumby Island and walked around the sandy beach and the rocky side. We did not make it across to the island as the tide was up, and the low tide today would still be a bit high. Still I saw birds and Marjan looked at pretty rocks.

The rest of the morning we essentially drove south through country roads surrounded by wheat, canola and some legume type crop. We would then end up at a gorgeous bay with a white beach and colourful headlands. And invariably there would be birds as we came in or as we came out or whilst there.

The first beach had a Lutheran camp, the second a Church of Christ, the next a Uniting, the next a Friends of the Fruitful Friar....and so it went. I only swam at the Uniting Church beach....it seemed safest. Though it was 23C my head still ached from the water temperature....and I had spooked a flock of cape barren geese on that particular beach. The sight of me swimming in my smalls will do that. Marjan just kept looking at rocks.

Sometimes you see a beach and wonder how you might get there. It is tempting to take unmarked roads..........until you see a sign that essentially says if you keep driving down this road in an attempt to visit a beach you will be shot down like vermin.........we turned back......

Because of the hills that we travelled through yesterday there are creeks and some of them have water. Mostly the water peters out into a samphire flat, salt lake and sometimes it manges to make the sea and becomes a mangrove swamp.....which at Tumby they turned in a Patterson's Lakes.

The birds we encountered were all over the place and huge variety. Hunting kestrels, kestrels at rest, singing honey eaters with and without food in their mouth, native hens panicked in a flock and native hens panicked on their own taking five poops in flight before finally turning away from where the car was going.

We also saw more lazy lizards than we have seen on any given day. Our count would have been somewhere in the twenties. We managed to avoid running any over. We also broke our snake record. We spotted three brown snakes.....one may have been dead, but Marjan refused to get out of the car and poke it. What can you do?

When we got hungry we found a made road and headed back to Tumby for lunch.

After lunch we essentially did the same thing but headed north. By then the wind had picked up, 50kph which made the beaches unpleasant places even though they were quite beautiful. We even had to do a creek cossing to get to one. Just before Port Neil we stopped at another beach and just behind the beach they had the original town water supply. It appeared to be fully functional and pumping water, though not for the town.

Port Neil appeared to be a happening place......by that I mean that if anything ever happened they would probably have to celebrate it.....I suspect the price of our ice creams was their main income for the day........very quiet.

Another day on the Eyre