Flinders Ranges

The drive from Wilmington to the Flinders was a short yet eventful one. We were detoured off our route passing through Quorn as they were shooting a film which was using the main street through town. The film is abased on a true story of Robyn Davidson's 2700km camel trek across the Australian desert with a couple of camels, the movie will be called "Treck". We hopped out for a bit of a gawk and walked pretty much straight through the middle of the set, obviously they weren't filming then. It was interesting to see how they had positioned props and changed the street to look like the seventies and the kids had many questions.

Then just shy of the Flinders camp there was a sudden "DONK" noise like the sound of a big red kangaroo being hit by an ARB Bull Bar at 100kph. Off course we pulled over to assess the damage, good news - not a scratch on the the bar, bad news....well...

All the kids wanted to jump out for a gander, being on the side of the road obviously they were not allowed to however Zoe positioned herself with the best view....clearly distraught with the situation!

We set up at Rawnsley Park Station down in an open camping area and felt like we the only people there, even though there were toilets and showers 100 meters away. We had lovely views of the Rawson Bluff which is the southern range of the Wilpena Pound.

Another nice night and fire...

The next day we drove up to Blinman via a few coooooold lookouts. The highlight of the trip was certainly the Copper Mine tour that we did.

We also drove some lovely tracks that were river beds and gorges. The weather was all over the place, at night we got some rain and the forecast had quickly turned to miserable. We decided that our plan was to hook the van on that night, walk the Wilpena Pound (7km) in the morning, visit some aboriginal painting sites and then drive south towards Peterborough or further depending on the time. Our plans altered when we woke to a freezing day with on and off showers and many dark clouds, the Pound was going to have to wait for next time - this would be our fourth of fifth day with showers for the entire trip! We left the Flinders that morning to make it to the sunnier Renmark.

We later found out that it snowed in the Flinders the day we left - good decision, only a shame that we didn't fit the Pound in the day before, damn weatherzone.

Streaky Bay and Wilmington

Streaky Bay is a nice little fishing town that boasts the record for the largest shark caught on a rod. We arrived there on Brielle's actual birthday after passing through the Ceduna fruit checkpoint and the oyster roadside bar, two must stops.




That evening we went out for dinner at the local which was quite nice, the sneeze guard over the salad bar was of top notch quality and the kids were given activity bags which was a welcome touch.





After spending a few hours in the bar we were surprised to see that the wind had picked up considerably whilst we ate and Darren rushed back to secure his awning. Fortunately a chap from a neighbouring van had kindly packed up Darren's awning for him after almost losing his own, lucky he did as the wind was quite strong by the time we returned and would have made a real mess of it for sure. Something we learnt a while back...take your awning down at night or put the annex up - twice I dragged Ves out of bed in the wee hours of the morning to hold the awning whilst I ran around dropping it!



The next day we drove on one of the tourist loop roads highlighting all of the local attractions which included several rocky outcrops of coastline with lookouts, some unimpressive rock pools and a sea lion colony which was much more impressive than the rock pools. The sea lions were a real hit and Brielle often refers back to them. Unfortunately some the lookouts and rock pool shots did out come out as there was no memory card in the camera.

The next stop on the loop road was an area called the "Murphy's Haystacks" which reminded us of the devils marbles. More impressive than the rock pools, probably not quite as impressive as the sea lions, so it would have to be a close second for the day. There was actually dozens upon dozens of these rocks, the pics certainly don't capture the way these just pop up in a field in the middle of nowhere. They are pink granite structures that were formed about 100,00 years ago via erosion of the surrounding rock.

We spent one final day in Streaky Bay where we lazed around for a bit, did a quick shop and didn't have a coffee at a cafe as planned as they were all shut, didn't go down well. Was nice weather so the boys took an esky onto the pier to go for some King George's but ended up having fun with floats and herring instead. The majority of these became food for the local pelicans which was enjoyable for the kids....not so much for the mums when all the kids came back smelling of fish after tossing them to the birds.

Due to poor weather conditions we decided to leave the main Eyre Peninsula (Coffin Bay and Port Lincoln) for another trip and detour slightly north towards the Flinders Ranges. To do this we drove from Streaky Bay to Wilmington to walk the gorge there before heading into the Flinders the following day. After the last month or so of beach it was a nice change to be back in the gorges ad tracks.

Wilmington also saw the departure of Darren, Stacey, Evie and Remmy. Thanks guys had heaps of laughs,  good luck with your travels, make some room in your freezer for the salmon!

Scott's Beach Videos

Due to technical difficulties I will have to put the vid links up separately to the pics, sorry.

 

A bit of dune fun...

 

Codi's salmon.....

 

Zoe has a crack...


 

Vesna's reluctant catch and release, we had been eating sashimi, fried fish and fish curries for days and have no more room left in the freezer, time for some meat!

 

The school on the move...Look for the darker trail in the water near the shore. Also one thick dark patch at the back but they were out of range.

 

At the PARTY.


Musical statues.....

 

Happy Birthday Brielle....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fowlers Bay and Scott's Beach

After completing the Nullarbor we ventured in for a night at Fowler's Bay Caravan Park, mainly to fill up on water and power before finding a nice beach camp for the following few days. We found the beach camp we were looking for during an afternoon drive to play on the dunes at Scott's Beach Conservation Park, getting the water was a slightly more difficult task which involved a few trips into town.

The next day we aired down for the rocky road into Scott's bay and found ourselves a nice spot tucked in behind the dunes hopefully shielding us from the forecasted southerlies in a couple of days. I snuck up for a look at the tides only to see a lone fisherman pull in a nice Salmon right in front of our camp. Striking up a brief conversation I honed in on the blade lure and lost no more time in informing Darren and assembling the rods. That little session was good fun and saw us land 5 and lose a few casting at the school as it came through.

Sashimi trevally followed by curried slamon for dinner.

After chatting to a friendly and helpful Aboriginal Mexican Indian from Ceduna (we couldn't pick, but he was definitely from Ceduna) I took an early drive the next day looking for his promised honeypot of a spot where at low tide the Salmon had taken refuge from sharks in a shallow gutter behind a sand bar just off shore. I only really came across the spot as the friendly AborMexdian was parked on top of the dune watching a school. After chatting for a bit I ventured down to see if i could get a few runts that had fallen away from the school that was out of casting distance. With AborMexdian's directions from above I got onto a smaller school and we both caught a few fish. Just as we were packing up and had already made the climb back to the car a school had come into the shallows as promised. After a frantic drive to camp and back Darren and I had returned with the fly gear to have an awesome little session.

The next morning marked the arrival of a big day for Brielle, her birthday party! Her actual birthday is tomorrow but as that was going to include a three hour drive we thought she would appreciate a beach camp party a day early instead.

She kicked off the morning like any 8 year old would, catching her first salmon. The salmon were once again in their convenient holding position so everyone had a turn at pulling in some of these beauties for the morning.

Zoe pulled in her fair share.

They were even surface feeding on green poppers!

Ves got first prize with this one estimated to be 12lb.

And possibly my favourite pic of the trip - Ves with her first fish on fly....who said fly fishing couldn't be sexy?

Then in the afternoon it was PARTY TIME!

Fairy Bread, Nachos, Party Pies, Sausage Rolls, Chips, Lollies, Little Boys, Balloons, Streamers, Cake (cheesecake....but not as good as Grammies apparently), musical statues - the works.

Twas a nice spot at Scott' beach and a memorable way to celebrate B's 8th birthday.