York, Eyre and Adelaide

Over the last few months I have been trying to keep up with all of the daily repairs, chores, schooling and my own studies. I had a few challenging assignments which kept up until late at night, and getting to my travelling stories has been difficult.

I now have only one exam to get through, and find myself with a bit of time for reporting on the more interesting things that I get to do.

We have spent time on The York Peninsula, The Eyre Peninsula, Spear Creek in the Southern Flinders Ranges, Adelaide and The Adelaide Hills.

On The York Peninsula we stayed at a camp ground called Daley Head. It was quite a large campground, and at one end there were steps leading down to an excellent beach. The weather wasn’t always good – we had some high winds, plenty of rain and clouds, but in general the camping was good and w had a fair bit of quality time on our small beach, and the much longer (and wilder) beach on the other side of the headland.

From Daley Head we explored the local townships on the south end of the peninsula and found some interesting history there as well as some fresh oysters at reasonable prices. We also finally had some successful fishing on the longer of the beaches, and had a couple of excellent feeds of fish.

We moved on after a week to the Eyre Peninsula, where we had been planning to spend two weeks, at two different camp grounds, a relatively small distance apart. We started at Fishery Bay, and this was the most beautiful beach – quite short but with crystal clear water, and really calm waters. We fished here and were successful wit a single flathead on one occasion.

Sarah’s parents had made the trip to meet us in nearby Port Lincoln, and they were able to get a BnB which the kids could stay in. The kids were pretty keen to stay with them and ended up having six nights under a solid roof (with TV and grandparental indulgence helping to sweeten the deal). Sarah and I stayed out in the tent with the dog and we met up each day to undertake some sight-seeing or some interesting activity. There was a fair bit of interest on The Eyre Peninsula and hopefully the photos can show a bit of what we got up to.

We went to Coffin Bay and had some oysters (reasonably priced, but harder to find than we expected). We also drove up further north to Cummins and then to the coastal town of Tumby Bay. Cumming had a small part of the SALT festival happening and the kids got to muck around with UV light art. Tumby Bay was windy and a bit cold, but we had a picnic there and Hamish tried to have a swim, but it was too cold even for him.

We had a great feed at the beer garden in The Boston Hotel, on a gloriously sunny day and then the next day the kids said goodbye to TV and a tin roof and Granny and Grandpa, who headed back to their renovations in NZ.

While they were winging over The Ditch, we headed north to Spear Creek Caravan Park, near Port Augusta, having decided that the one week on The Eyre Peninsula had been enough. We had had no internet and the sun was on and off all week at Fishery Bay, so Sarah was getting a bit behind her schedule of work and we needed to stay somewhere with more reliable internet and hopefully some sunshine.

We had a reasonably quiet week in Spear Creek catching up on a few things, but alas the internet wasn’t great, an although we had a fair bit of sunshine for a few days, we were in a valley, and even with full sunshine all day we only had about six hours on the solar panels. This is enough to keep everything going, but we were still catching up from the previous week, and so things were getting pretty stressed by the time we left to go to Adelaide. We had also had a run in with the Park Management about the quote they gave us, and then them not honoring our membership discount for Family Parks, and that had left a bit of a sour taste in the mouth, despite the great camping and walks that we enjoyed there.

On to Adelaide – back to the big smoke – where we really didn’t have much fun at all. We had a bit of a look around, but mostly it was wet and really, really cold. The solar panels still didn’t catch up, and we were freezing cold a lot of the time. Sarah had a two nights off with her friends visiting the Barossa Valley. I was entertaining the kids and did manage to catch up with my one friend in Adelaide who brought his twin girls to a beer garden near me, where we all had lunch and a couple of cleansing ales. That was by far the highlight of the week (that and picking up Starlink, which I think will be have a really positive impact on our internet lives.

The internet in Adelaide was non-existent in the caravan park and that became pretty stressful for Sarah early in the week. The camp kitchens were OK but cold, and didn’t offer any refuge from the weather. I was very glad to leave when we did – packing up in the bitterly cold rain always bites, but we were hoping we were on our way to sunshine.

So we drove for about an hour, stopping halfway at Mt Barker to get some boots (for Hamo) out of the packages we were sending back to Brisbane and then continuing on to Harry’s Bush Camp at Rockleigh, about halfway between Mt Barker and Murray Bridge. The sun shone for a few days in a row, and we finally got on top of the power requirements. Starlink (or Skynet as I know it) proved to be excellent, but we had to do some ginning around to figure out how to carry it and store it safely.

From Harry’s we explored the Adelaide Hills, the main highlights for me being Hahndorf (where I have been before, but always working) and Bridgewater, where we spent a few hours on Mothers’ Day watching the kids play in the creek (not just our kids, but every kid in the pub – surprisingly many). While they played, we listened to the live guitarist and enjoyed a cool beverage or two.

We saw our first koala in the wild while we walked down to the pub at Bridgewater, and that was really fun for everyone. The kids kept themselves entertained in the creek, and Sarah and I had small side bets on the various other kids who were playing in the creek, and who would be the next to go in. There were clearly some experienced parents there, since one of the little girls showed up in her third dry outfit at one point (this didn’t stop her going back to the creek for more, though).

Every day at Harry’s the kids helped feed the horses, although Heidi doesn’t rise as early as Hamish, and missed out a few times. We had campfires every night and sometimes in the morning too, and on our last night we cooked a roast on the fire in the camp oven. One of our favourite meals, and made us feel like we were getting back to what we’re supposed to be doing on this trip.

The kids and I visited Marray Bridge for a second time in the week to stock up at Aldi before we headed north into small town Australia where the supermarket prices are even higher than big town Australia. The Murray River is clear and beautiful there, and apparently this is something that hasn’t happened for a long time, but is the result of the flooding up-river which has cleaned out the system. For those who don’t know (those from OS), the Murray River is constantly drained of water by irrigators and it doesn’t flow the way it does when in its natural state. It is a hugely important resource for the farmers in three states, but Murray Bridge is pretty close to the end of the line, and without the huge flooding events that have happened upstream, there is just not much water that flows through to the mouth (relatively speaking).

From Harry’s we headed north to Peterborough, but that is for another report, since everything is still under way.