No that photo hasn’t been played with in any way, the sky was that blue and the salt lake was that orange/pink colour. I’ve been surprised at how many pink lakes there are around Australia, this is the fourth one I’ve seen without trying to find them.
I couldn’t get a replacement tire the same as mine in Port Augusta, so I bought a puncture repair kit and a can or tyre fix and figured I’d get a tyre in Adelaide in a few days.
The Flinders ranges are the largest mountains within South Australia, starting about 200km north of Adelaide and stretching over 400km northwards. I’d had a recommendation from a friend that I should visit Wilpena Pound, a section of the ranges where the hills/mountains form a huge natural amphitheater shape. Wilpena pound also contains the highest point of the Flinders, St Mary’s peak at over 1100m.
Finally I get to move on from Fowlers bay. Driving east along the South Australian coast it’s bay after bay, Smokey Bay, Baird Bay, Venus Bay, Streaky Bay, Coffin Bay, Tumby Bay and Arno bay, and they’re just the major ones. It’s an interesting area of coast with beautiful rocky coastlines, rugged cliffs and miles of white beaches between them.
Cactus beach and Point Sinclair are found about 21 km south of Penong, the next small town heading east from Fowlers Bay. The surf at Cactus beach is renowned as one of the best in Australia and on the day I visited, the surf was small but well formed with a couple of surfers out making the most of it.
The most western coastal town in South Australia, and for me at least it seems to be a little bit of a trap. I booked in for 2 nights at the caravan park when I arrived, today I went and paid for my ninth night. So I haven’t officially crossing the nullabor as yet Ceduna is still another hundred odd kilometres away and commonly considered the South Australian end of the nullabor.
I’m not going to say a lot in this post about Esperance, I was only there for a few days, some of that time I spent preparing for my trip across the nullabor and the rest of the time I was driving around taking photos. Although Esperance has magnificent beaches, the thing that impressed me most during my stay was Helms arboretum, about 15kms north of Esperance.
It all started a while back when I visited boat harbour near Denamark, I noticed a few small interesting shells at one end of the beach and when I looked a little closer, there was an area at the end of the beach on the low flat rocks where shell grit was collecting. There were many broken bits of shell and corals, rocks and other rubbish in among it, but once you sort through the grit and get out the whole shells and interesting bits, you can be left with something quite beautiful.
