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
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