The Bays

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.

I traveled along this area reasonably slowly, taking over a week to travel around six hundred kilometres, basing myself in free or cheap campsites for a few days before driving out in different directions to explore without the van. After spending 5 weeks in Fowlers Bay caravan park I really needed to do some free camping.

I was keen to camp at Perlubie after reading about it online. The thought of being parked right down on the beach sounded great, though I’m glad that I drove down there without the van first as the beach was filled with people. A beautiful spot to camp for only $5 a night, but word is out and people are flocking there.

Here at Cummings Monument I found a great spot on top of the cliffs. I had the place all to myself and it didn’t cost a cent to stop right on the edge of the cliffs for the night. I cooked up a lovely meal of fish and salad, cracked open a bottle of white wine, turned up some good music and watched the sunset on the cliffs.

This may give you a better perspective of the scale, the cliffs were pretty big. Though this next one is just an eroded bank on a near by beach.

 

Coffin Bay is famous for oysters and although it’s a nice little town it didn’t really grab me. Perhaps it was just that the weather was rather oppressive while i was there, or maybe because the area reminded me so much of  the swan river in Perth, it was almost like i’d never left.

Port Lincoln was interesting, the first reasonably large town I’d seen for about 2 months, though the novelty wore off pretty quickly, and after stocking up on supplies it was time to get a camping spot ready for Easter. Holidays were coming and things get busy, I didn’t want to be out on the roads.

About half way between Port Lincoln and Port Augusta is a little place called Point Gibbon which looked like an ok place to camp up over the Easter break. There are 4 or 5 separate camp grounds along the coast here and I decided to stay at the very end camp ground where there are no facilities. I arrived there the day before Easter so managed to score the best spot, with my van overlooking the water.

The day I arrived I heard from Cloudy, a German traveler I’d met back in Margaret River months ago, she came to join me at Point Gibbon for the Easter break and Bob and Mavis Gibbon were born. We had fun impersonating some of the grey nomad personalities we’d met during our travels, and this went on for many days. It was great to have someone around for a while who I knew, rather than the constant travelling greets and goodbyes you tend to have most of the time.

Walking along the beach I found many pretty urchins and left them in a nest for someone else to find as a bit of a crazy Easter thing.

 

And the sand dunes close up…