Port Lincoln Part 2

I spent the day exploring Port Lincoln and the surrounding area. It was just a magic day and the last that autumn had to offer was unbelievably fine. 

Above is the view from my apartment. I could struggle out of bed to that every morning, you wouldn't even have to ask nicely. After a leisurely breakfast I headed for the foreshore grabbed a coffee and soaked up the rays. The foreshore had marble plinths along the way commemorating things such as Matthew Flinders finding the place, the first fishing trawler, the last cargo sailing ship; that sort of thing. Right in the middle of the park however, almost at the waters edge, is a statue of Makybe Diva. I mean Matthew Flinders found the place but the horse got the statue. It makes you proud to be an Aussie.

The statue cost $180,000.00 and is a life size replica. Her owner  (Tony Santic) comes from the town so there is a legitimate connection. Plus its not everyday you win the Melbourne Cup and to do it three times is pretty special. It made for an interesting diversion. 

I headed to the Axel Stenross Maritime Museum where they had an excellent display of the all the commercial fishing activities that goes on around the town. There are cray fisherman, prawn fisherman, tuna fisherman, abalone divers and oyster farmers. Aquaculture is big business in Port Lincoln. The museum's name sake was a local Finnish boat builder who lived here for over 50 years. There are many examples of his handiwork on display.

The town also offers a range of aquatic activities that a visitor can partake in. You can go diving with sharks (yeah right), you can swim with the tuna (sorry but they won't swim too well when they are served medium rare with a white wine sauce) or you can swim with the sea lions (nobody seemed to notice it was a day before Winter) along with a host of other things. I passed on all of these and went in search of food.

I headed out to Coffin Bay home to what are considered to be the world's best oysters. What a sad story that place is. It got its name for being the place where an almost entire ship load of passengers were buried. They were coming to Australia to settle in the only state that didn't have convicts and that was their fate. Struck down by yellow fever and never setting foot in their new homeland. Nuh, its all lies it was actually named by Matthew Flinders after one of his admiralty buddies Isaac Coffin. I liked my story better however.

Lunch: Ignore the Water and Admire the View

As you can see lunch was pretty good, I followed up the oysters with a tuna steak salad, truly awesome. 

From there I needed to walk of my over indulgence and headed to the Coffin Bay National Park. I paid my entry fee and took in some of the views.

I communed with nature and actually got my feet wet walking along this beach.

I finished my afternoon with an hours walk up to a lookout where nature came to me. The bird life was abundant, I was greeted by kangaroos and the emus that had earlier tried to impale themselves on my car still were pretty friendly (don't be surprised if I come home with an emu hood ornament, they are seriously suicidal). I headed back to town to catch up with a friend of a friends. There must be something about the Bryant name, everyone with that surname seems to be going out of their way to be nice to me.

Jim Bryant is a spritely 82 year old and former chairman of the local radio station along with a myriad of other business interests. He kindly took time out of his incredibly active life to give me a few tips about the journey ahead, share some gossip about out old mate Daryl Durrant and just generally chew the fat. 

I retired for the evening, grabbed a whisky, took in the awesome view and did some preparation for the Nullarbor. I'm not sure what the phone/internet is like so I may be off the radar for a few days. Anyway the plan is to spend the day exploring Streaky Bay then bedding down in Ceduna for the evening. After that its 1,200 kilometres of I know not what. I'll catch everybody on the flip side.

The Country Wave

The trip into Port Lincoln was long and somewhat tedious. South Australia has one very good feature however that NSW could learn from, roads that would be marked as 90kph in NSW are sign posted as 110kph here. It speeds up the boredom. 

Port Lincoln

I pointed the Vectra in the direction of the coast and set out for Port Lincoln, sadly waving goodbye to Wilpena Pound. The Flinders Ranges is one of those places that has to be seen to be believed. It is full of incredible beauty tinged with tragedy and sadness. The entire area is testimony to man's failure to tame the elements. 

Flinders Ranges

The Magical Whisky Tour rolls on and here I am in the Flinders Ranges. How can I best describe them? They're like the Power Rangers only with less Lycra and dressed in natural colours. I need to thank DB for his excellent advice otherwise I would never have come here. The scenery, in particular the scope of the scenery, is just breath taking. From now on DB you will be known as "The Guru of Glenelg". The skies have been cloudless and the breadth of your vision is literally not big enough to take in the mighty vistas. Impressive stuff.

I left Burra and all it had to offer at about 9.00am on Monday morning and headed for the ranges. I took a slightly longer route that took me along a bit of the coast. There was no real benefit to this. I just passed through a number of sleepy towns and skirted around Port Pirie and Port Augusta. I stopped for lunch at a place called Quorn (pronounced Corn like the vegetable). At one point in the trip I was only 320 kms from Broken Hill, you don't realise how big NSW is until you try to avoid it. Quorn was the last place you could get reasonably priced petrol (to give you an example it is $1.70 a litre here) so I topped up and had some lunch after wandering around the town.

Quorn itself had once been a big railway town where the original "Afghan" or more commonly known as the "Ghan" railway passed through. During WWII it serviced 43 trains a day with troops criss crossing the country. It still has a railway but it is run by volunteers and only works on weekends for the tourist market, running down to Port Augusta and back. I had lunch at the delightful Emily's Bistro, where I was served an excellent roast pork and a flat white for $15.00. How do they do it for the price? It was housed in an old department store that still had the name "The Great Northern Emporium". It was liking a working museum. The business was lined with solid timber counters and glass display cases. It still had the old pulley system used to send sales overhead to the central cashier. Much of the furniture, crockery and cutlery was period as well. All fabulous stuff. They had an old piano in the corner that still had its original double sconce for holding the candles. I was tempted to sit down and have a play but I held myself back.

From Quorn it was on through Hawker and then Wilpena Pound Resort where I checked in for two nights. I managed to land a half price deal through wotif including breakfast which came in quite handy. Its an eco lodge apparently which probably means I shouldn't be using the air conditioner buts its cold and I am. I love these places, it has a sign asking you to reuse your towel for environmental purposes then gives you only enough space to hang up one. The room I'm in sleeps 4. The staff here are great and have been fabulous with maps and places to see. 

Went and saw some real Aboriginal rock art which was a bit special. You can't take your eyes off the view around here it is just all encompassing. But you cant take your eyes off the road either as the stock and the wildlife use it with almost gay abandon. In my two days driving here I have had wallabies, rock wallabies, sheep, rabbits, kangaroos and emus all jump blithely in front of the car, hell bent on committing suicide. Its lucky I am such a caring, sharing sensitive new age guy. 

Its real 4 wheel drive (and Vectra country), the poor old thing has been getting quite a beating on this trip. I got caught up in the bar with a tour group last night who were somewhat pretentious and giving everyone a hard time. I don't know how those tour leaders do it. I think I would be telling them to do the "in and word off" a lot. I found out what time they are eating tonight and am getting there an hour later. Hopefully I will miss them. 

I went to a place called Spokes Hill to watch this magnificent sunset earlier this evening. It would a really romantic place to take a date, fortunately I didn't have to worry as there were 7 4WD loads of tourists all having a wank about the size of their vehicles. I almost couldn't see the view for the tripods and the massive lenses on their camera. I was getting serious lens envy. I mean the last time I was involved in anything that long was one of the lunches I had in the 80's. Anyway the sunset was magic. I'm off to dinner now so I can torment some more tour groups. You have to make your fun wherever you can. 

Clare Valley

So it's goodbye to Adelaide and all the hopelessly well groomed people there. It's grown so much since my last visit and has really turned into quite the vibrant city. I jumped in a couple of cabs and they darted in and out of traffic with reckless abandon. The restaurants and bars were pumping and the shops were all well patronised. Its the kind of place I would be happy to live. There's just this one thing I have to mention. They have this one way freeway. It doesn't make any sense. In the morning it goes one way and on some evenings it goes another. If you are going against the traffic, bad luck take the highway with all it's 50 kmh zones and traffic lights. At unspecified dates and times the freeway runs in whatever direction it pleases. I believe the direction is chosen using the South Australian Premier's (Jay Weatherill) astrological charts, that would make as much sense any I suppose.

Maclaren Vale

I finally succumbed. Having travelled through innumerable wine districts over the last few weeks (think Hunter Valley, Tamar Valley, Coonawarra, Adelaide Hills, Limestone Coast, Mornington Peninsula, Padthaway and Clare Valley) I finally did some serious wine tasting. Before I could do that I caught up with an old buddy who I had let slip through the cracks. David Bolton, or DB as he is known, owns a company here is Adelaide called Maximum Gaming. He and I, along with selected others, had an annual ritual of catching up every year at the Gaming Expo in Sydney. Needless to say it was lots of good food, food wine and good company. He kindly took a day out of his busy life to play tour guide to Maclaren Vale. Together we drank lots of wine, talked about the old days, caught up on the new developments he has going (he will be king of LED lighting in Australia of that I have no doubt) and took is some magical wines accompanied by some fabulous vistas. A better way to spend a day I cannot think of.

Adelaide

It seems that the bad weather is following me around. It poured down on my drive up to Adelaide from Cape Jervis and by lunchtime Friday it was raining after what looked to be a fine start to the day. I haven't been here since 1985, things have changed. There's traffic to begin with. Adelaide used to be a big country town now its clearly a city. Many of the people are impossibly well groomed and dressed. It has lots of imposing old buildings scattered around the place and of course it's home to the Giant Pandas. 

Kangaroo Island to Adelaide

The people on Kangaroo Island are really starting to grow on me, they speak with a frankness that is quite refreshing. They call a spade a front end loader. There is no doubt what they mean and where you stand. We all agreed that the recent weather had been crap and yes it would have been nice for me to have seen it all but I either had to stick around and hope it got better or suck it up princess and stop whining. Off course I found a third way. 

Kangaroo Island

Well the weather here is crap but that's ok. I'm told it doesn't rain underground. I have ventured out from my accommodation in Kingscote and struck out in the Vectra to Seal Bay, then on to the Birds of Prey display and inevitably the Kelly Hill Cave. I was warned before I got here that the Islanders use a different method of time keeping, it may not be quite geological but Greenwich mean is more of a concept than reality. They are a rough and tumble lot, real back slapping, beer swilling, nose picking, ball scratching kind of guys. 

Murray Bridge

I spent the night in Murray Bridge last night and don't I wish I hadn't, what a dump. My Coonawarra Cab Sav hangover didn't get better all day. It was miserable whenever I went. Anywhere that was even mildly interesting or scenic was spoilt by the weather. The towns got progressively more dull. Robe was nice, Kingston was ok and Meningie didn't have a lot going for it apart from the wind. At that point I decided that at the next decent size town I would stop for the night. I consulted the map ans there were three choices, Wellington, Tailem Bend and Murray Bridge. Suffice it to say I didn't make a good choice.