33 Eyre Peninsula 7 May 2012

Oceania » Australia » South Australia » Coffin Bay
May 8th 2012

Published: May 8th 2012

Edit Blog Post

DonPattie

Fencing & Salt bush

Whyalla to Pt Lincoln

We’ve spent this week on the Eyre Peninsula. This is 200km west of Adelaide, a large triangular south-facing peninsula with lots of sheep and wheat production.

Whyalla is South Australia’s 2^nd largest city due mostly to the steel mill there, backed up by more iron ore exports. We went on a tour of the steel mill, but, unfortunately, were not able to see a steel pour. They convert coal to coke as well for the steel making process and we saw a red hot coke pour which was really impressive. The site and the volumes handled are immense. Weather wasn’t the best with wind and rain, but the campground was superb.

We then headed south to Port Lincoln, at the tip of the peninsula. On the way passed through Cowell which we’ll have to come back to, as the pub has $10 spit roasted pork dinners on Wednesdays.

0n our way south, we saw a kangaroo hop across the road. We’ve seen plenty of roadkill on the side of the road. And occasionally in the middle, but this is the first time we’ve had a kangaroo directly in our sights. He/she was lucky as 4½ tonnes of car

Cowell

Pork on Wednesdays

and caravan doesn’t stop quickly.

As we have come south, we’ve seen more sheep and lambs, mostly merino. The lambs are new, so lambing is quite different to NZ.

Port Lincoln is a fishing town. They catch yellowfin tuna in the southern ocean, put them in 30m diameter cages and tow the cages back to port. At 1 - 2 knots, this takes from 3 to 6 weeks to do. They then feed the fish up, and catch and export them to Japan as needed. The fish are from 100 to 250kg each and can be worth up to AUD5,000 each. The large expensive houses all belong to the fishermen. Port Lincoln is a large “efficient” town. It’s clean and has a strong sense of purpose. There are 250 ocean going fishing boats in the marina, and they are all clean and well looked after. We went on a harbour cruise to a tuna cage and around the harbour. Port Lincoln is about the same latitude as Kaitaia, so the climate is similar. It’s very nice, except it’s nearly 700km by road to Adelaide, and 200km by seagull. They’ve got a huge wheat export setup too.

Port

Waterfront

Campground at Pt Lincoln

Lincoln was considered for the capital of SA, as it has a great harbour, but the problem was a lack of a water supply. They have a dam and steam but the main supply is piped in. One of the amazing things has been the pipe alongside the road. It carries water to the peninsula from the Murray River. From Morgan on the Murray to Port Lincoln is about 675km – quite a distance. This is longer than the famous pipeline of 600km from Perth to Kalgoorlie.

Again, we had a fabulous site right on the water; however, it was cold and wet too!

Our next stop was Coffin Bay, which is another fabulous harbour, about 45km west of Port Lincoln. It grows oysters and Pattie has pronounced them quite acceptable. However she keeps needing to check that declaration. Lovely wild coast and quiet harbours. Its quiet and laid back, but we suspect that it’s different during the summer months.

The local butcher sells meat and oysters, prawns, cheese, eggs and his partner married a girl from Palmerston North. All the good ones find a reason to leave!

Scroll down past the ads, etc for more