It's never too late for catastrophe

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Day 240 - Surfleet Cove, Lincoln National Park

We woke up to yet another beautiful morning totally gorgeous and what a view we’ve got from our little caravan window. We’re still alone here at Surfleet Cove, it’s hard to believe it really but we don’t mind one little bit. Just us, the Galahs and those naughty roos!

There are so many bush walks within the National Park that we’re totally spoilt for choice. We’ve picked an easy one for today in conjunction with exploring the rest of the campsites. It looks like it’s going to be a lovely warm day so that spurs us to get out and about early.

We head down to Taylors Landing initially, one of the more popular camp spots with fishermen because of the boat ramp. It’s pretty early when we get down there but already the fishermen are up and at it. We set off on the lovely walk around the coastline, the views are beautiful as always but we’re not seeing much in the way of marine life. Dar spotted either a seal or a sea lion last night when he was fishing off the beach but other than that we haven’t seen anything. It’s the wrong season for whales, we know that, but we thought dolphins or the dreaded pointer sharks might be around further off shore. No luck with either so far.

From Taylors Landing you can walk to MacLarens Point via the long beach but once we’ve cleared the hiking section across the cliff we head back rather than doing that, we’ll find some where else to walk instead. There are huge shells here and all of them in good nick so we bag a few and joke that we’ll make bookends out of them for presents … but it doesn’t sound like such a stupid idea, they’re actually really nice! Anybody want a couple of fancy bookends for a late Christmas Present?!

Back we drove to Fishermans Point, another of the camping spots that’s accessible by caravans. It’s not so spacious as Surfleet Cove but there are a couple of people here plus a couple of yachts moored in the bay. It’s a very attractive outlook and we think that from here we can see our caravan tucked in the bush over the other side of the water. Yes there it is, all alone….with only a kangaroo for company! You can guess why they’re back!

We carry on up to Cape Donington but on the way spot a snake on the road and because we are without caravan it means we can turn around to have a better look. The poor thing has obviously been run over and it’s not in the best of health. We’re not sure what to do, you can’t take chances with snakes especially when you don’t know what make they are and we have no idea. We pull alongside and it doesn’t move his body but he opens his mouth to let out a mildly weak warning sign. In the end we decided to move him to the scrub on the side of the road. We can’t just pick him up and move him so we firstly try using the swimming noodles but they’re not strong enough so instead we extend the legs on the camera tripod and move him with that. Stop laughing! He wasn’t in any better state when we drove off, perhaps we should have put him out of his misery, poor thing but you never know he might make a miraculous recovery … hiss!

We made it to Cape Donington, passing the cottage which you can rent out through the visitors centre (something to remember for the future maybe!) and parked up ready to hit the loop walk. Bring it on, we could do with stretching our legs!

Off we go to admire the promised views of offshore islands, granite outcrops and sandy beaches. It was beautiful, the whole walk from start to finish was really enjoyable and the beaches are just stunning. We collected shells along Engine Point Beach and stopped for a drink at September Beach where there’s another campsite heralded by Lonely Planet as the favourite in the park. It is lovely and the individual camp spots have their own fire pits and picnic benches which are always a bonus (except when there’s a fire ban in place, like now!). The only thing that spoils the view is the pile of rubbish left outside the toilets, looks like somebody’s had a party and couldn’t be arsed to take their rubbish away with them. I suggest it’s a good opportunity to get our outback pack and tidy the place up but the look of horror from Dar let me know that wouldn’t be happening! Instead we compromised and put the pile inside the toilet hut so that at the very least it wouldn’t spread itself over the beach when the wind got up.

On the way through to Cape Donington we had a quick chat with a couple just setting their camper up, they’re originally from Brighton in the UK but now live in Perth. They’re coming over to camp at Surfleet Cove for tomorrow night so we tell them we’re going into town in the morning and if they want anything to give us a shout over the UHF. They’re going cage diving with Great White Sharks on Boxing Day at a cost of $500 each, rather them than us I have to say!

We admire the view from where we left the car and then head back into camp. There are plenty more walks to do but I’m spacing them out over the coming days so we have another for tomorrow and then a big one for my birthday and then a short one for Christmas Day. We’re really looking forward to it all so long as the weather holds. It’s not looking too good for tomorrow; the internet tells us that it’s going to be cloudy with the possibility of a shower, more probably a torrent of rain. That’s not sounding great but it’s really dry around here so they could probably do with it, best not to complain. My birthday and Christmas Day are looking better though which is good news, it could be dinner on the beach with the Pelicans after all!

We have company back at camp, a huge caravan pulls in to one of the spots at the other end. The couple must have decided it was a bit small for them but when they tried to pull the caravan around to get it out they just couldn’t manage it and he had to reverse out instead, it took them ages and we had to go busy ourselves around our pitch so we didn’t watch! Another couple are setting up a tent a next-door-but-one and then we spotted a group just off shore who were snorkelling. That looked to be a good idea so we grabbed our kit and went off to join them in the water.

The temperate of the water was shocking, it was really warm! We were stunned, we expected it to be freezing but it was like a bath and absolutely gorgeous. We snorkelled around a bit and found plenty of pretty fish to gaze at, not many were big enough to eat but Dar found a couple so another fishing session is probably on the cards. First things first though, the bush shower needed to be erected for today’s cleaning session and we needed a roo protection device adding! The hessian bags from our outback pack were just the thing and in no time at all we had an all round bush shower surround with a “Humans Only - No Roos” attachment. It did the trick, we didn’t see hide nor hair of the roos until the shower was long gone!

Our fishing trip went well, Dar caught a fish! I know, shocker huh! Sadly it was the one and only but it was a fair size so in the bucket he went as we pondered how to cook him. Firstly we really need to find out what he was though and as we’d seen our new next-but-one-door neighbour out snorkelling and returning to camp with armfuls of something or other we thought he might know!

The armfuls of something or other were actually giant Oysters that Alex had collected whilst out snorkelling, impressive in size but apparently once you’ve broken them open there’s not much meat in there. We have a good chat and laugh with Alex and his wife Sue then head back for dinner deciding that the Australian Salmon we have caught would make a good meal for one or good bait for another fishing trip, bait it was!

Alex called round for Dar a couple of hours later and they went out fishing again whilst I stayed at camp doing the blog and cracking on with the cross stitch. I watched a Ranger drive into camp and visit the other, now three, campers in the cove and then he came to me.

It was quite late on (about 8.30pm) and he was delivering some bad news, we had to leave the park in the morning. I listened intently to take in what he had to say but it seemed really surreal and at one stage I nearly asked him how long he’d known my cousin’s wife Anna (who had phoned us yesterday insisting we return to Melbourne for Christmas) and how much was she paying him to tell us we couldn’t stay here and therefore must return ‘home’!

What the Ranger had come to tell us all was that the Government Bureau of Meteorology had issued a catastrophic fire danger warning for the whole of the Eyre Peninsula which Lincoln National Park is at the bottom of. The weather is forecasted to reach temperatures of 41 degrees or more with warnings of strong winds. He also said that if we see any signs of electrical storm activity tonight that we should perhaps think about leaving earlier than the morning. He explained that should a fire break out in or reach the National Park then there is no way they could control it and therefore it was safer for them to close it and for us to leave whilst the warning was in place.

I sat there, without Dar who was fishing still with Alex, and didn’t really know what to say other than to thank him for letting us know. I did say that when I’d checked the weather it hadn’t suggested anywhere near those temperatures and he went on to say that there was a cool change expected soon after bringing around 30mm of rain with it and that being here even then might not be so pleasant. It was all really difficult to believe and I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way at all it was just a bit out of the blue. I wasn’t going to question it however but I was curious when we might be able to get back in, assuming no fire took place and was pleased to hear that if the rain they were expecting came the park would probably be re-opened tomorrow afternoon. With that he apologised for being the bearer of bad news, got in his Ute and left.

About 30 minutes later both Darryl and Alex appeared so I passed on the information, you can imagine their surprise on this lovely, cool, summers evening! Alex went to speak to Sue and I sat with Dar going over what the Ranger had told me once again. He’d been really nice about everything, really apologetic about having to ask us to leave and as we talk we saw a flurry of lights going on so it looked as if the rest of the park were being informed too.

With that, what should we see behind us in the distance but lightening. Now what was it the Ranger had said again “If you see any electrical storm activity tonight you might want to think about leaving”. Did we want to leave tonight? Should we leave tonight? We weren’t sure, Dar went round to see what Alex’s take was on the whole situation but he’d gone to bed! I guess that gave us one answer!

We packed up the caravan, instructed each other on the most important things to grab in the event of an emergency and discussed what we should do if a fire broke out - to run straight for the sea seemed the sensible and only solution so that’s what we settled on.

In bed we lay with one eye and one nostril open hoping that tomorrow we’d wake up and it would be raining - now that’s not something many Brits wish for!

Dar and Sar

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Photos

Reel him in Hun!
Dar catches his first 'legal' fish, an Australian Salmon!