Piering

Headed out to Fowler's bay this morning after breakfast. We had planned to stay there but could not get accommodation that did not involve a caravan or a tent.

Anyway a short hour and a half and we were there. Not much of a ton, but a great pier. We obviously walked to the end and looked for whales. We spotted a few blow but they were a long way out.

I decided that standing on a pier watching whales clear their nostrils 1km off shore was NOT the way to spend the morning, so I headed up into the amazing sand dunes. It was hard work getting up the first one and my runners were filling with sand, but once I got up to the first ridge it was all OK.

I walked along the ridge lines looking for the next highest dune. I was not alone some other people were traversing the dunes......they used vehicles. Eventually I got to what looked like the tallest dune, it was almost overlooking Scott Bay, the next bay west. Anyway, I did not fancy walking back up this dune so I did not go down to Scott Bay, Instead I looped around and took a different route along another ridge back towards Fowler's Bay.

I was pretty thirsty and hot by the time I got back. It was getting quite warm, around 28C, so when I met up with Marjan who had been whale spotting and chatting to vintage fishermen, we went to the Caravan Park shop and had a coffee and cake.

Before heading off we got into a conversation with the young guy running the Eco tours out to the whales. His house was one of the places had tried to book. Unfortunately he does not rent it out during the whale season. Instead he runs his whale tours an lives with the hales frolicking directly outside his lounge window. I could understand but I still resented not getting that place. He was quite a young man and we chatted about Governments an how thy help (NOT) people like him. He was very dismissive of the assistance he had got in setting up his business. Apparently when he bought into Fowler's Bay he did not realize that he was buying a prime whale watching location. We agreed to come back and do one of his tours in 2020 when the next big season is expected. Numbers have been growing yearly but every three years seems to bring a big number.

SO we finally headed back onto the highway and back towards Ceuduna. Not directly though, we wanted to explore a couple of other places along the coast. The first was a place on the map called Cactus Beach. Marie Anne wondered if it was the secret surfing spot she had heard about......cannot have been too much of a secret, if one of us was hearing about it........... We headed south from Penong, past the gypsum mine.......

past the pink lake......which attaches to the salt mine....................

onto the spit of land leading to Point Sinclair. Some locals appeared to have beach shacks behind the dunes, and the National Surfing Reserve signs, camp ground, and surfer with his wet suit around his ankles gave away that yes this was probably a prime surfing spot. To my untrained eye the break looked appealing, but not appealing enough to do more than paddle. It was past our lunch time but the lies and the lack of a decent spot to sit kept us moving. Only further along to the point and a lovely picnic spot called Port Le Hunte.

The pier here had apparently been 300 metres in its heyday was currently the main swimming spot for Penong and district. They had put up a shark proof net after they lost a young lad in the 70's to a shark attack near the pier. I bravely decided to paddle my feet, BUT NOT have a swim. Anyway we had our lunch and enjoyed a beautiful little bay..

There appeared to be a number of similar spots along this coast. We did not have time for all of them. We wondered what the Dutch made of these places in the 17^th century. A certain gentleman by the name of Nuyts left his name on many places (a reef and an archipelago to be going on with) well before Eyre and Flinders journeys. And of course the various aboriginal tribes had been wandering around here for many tens of thousand of years. One of their dreamings seems to be about an encounter with the Dutch.

Anyway, back on the road, and on to Denial Beach. Named that way because Flinders was finally denied his drem of an inland waterway coming out to see somewhere along here. Another pier, this one populated by quite a number of fisher people. Th people doing best appeared to be the three asian ladies at the end of the pier who seemed to be reeling in small fish almost every time they cast. Apparently the original pier here had been 1750 feet (about 500 metres).

Almost every little bay and or settlement seems to have a pier. The transport in the 18^th and 19^th and even into the early 20^th century was essentially by boat. So getting grain, gypsum, salt or sheep in or out meant getting to the sea and shipping it along the coast. Given the gun-barrel straight highway, we forget that cars and bitumen are relatively recent. Apparently the Nullarbor was only paved in 1976. Our Nullabor pilot told us about his dad telling him about a mate who had crossed before bitumen....the whole trip on dirt in a car without a battery. He would have had to rest near the tops of dunes/rises to get a push start. Amazing.

A glorious day, exploring an interesting part of Australia.

On the way back into Ceduna, we spotted this Oyster Bar. One of our thoughtful daughters had bought us dinner at the oyster bar and we wondered if she had though to book the upstairs table so that we could enjoy the view of the swamp on one side and the Eyre Highway and 24 hours truck spot on the other.

Of course the thoughtful daughter had thought this through and had booked us into a completely different oyster bar somewhere much more salubrious later on.

We had decided to dine at the pub after a couple of home cooked meals, the very fresh fish was lovely, and we chose the right night. Sunset was glorious, and the birds roosting in the trees a constant display.Hmmmmmmmmmm

Piering indeed.