G'day from Streaky Bay

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Yesterday we headed south to Port Lincoln which is on the very pretty Boston Bay. A huge grain silo dominates the waterfront and we found many of the tuna trawlers in a harbour at the back of the town. In a park is a statue of the horse Makybe Diva who won the Melbourne Cup three consecutive years.

We drove all around town to have a good look and, after having lunch there, drove on then around the bottom of the Eyre Peninsular to the western side and to Coffin Bay. We wondered if the Coffin related to the pioneering Coffin family on Nantucket Island in Massachussetts and later read that Matthew Flinders - whose name pops up everywhere along here - he did circumnavigate the country - called the bay after his friend, Sir Isaac Coffin of the British Navy who was born in Boston.

We'd no sooner set up that it began to rain - we were lucky as we'd had a good look around the bay in the sunshine, pretty, large and famous for Coffin Bay oysters. It's a small town but all these towns swell from hundreds to thousands in summer. It was raining early this morning and we left Coffin Bay in a heavy fog.

The countryside was still all grain growing and once again we struck paddocks full of stones. I don't know how they plough them without breaking the plough. On nearly every farm there was a half-hearted attempt to build stone walls but the farms are so big and the stones so many, we didn't see one completed wall. Every town is on a bay and every bay has a jetty and one or two very large grain silos.

We realised we were now overlooking the Southern Ocean and the Great Australian Bight. We had a good look around Ellison - thrilled to actually see waves breaking as all the water we've seen has been still in bays and peninsulars. The coastline looks very rugged - like the limestone coast of the Great Ocean Rd. and I'm betting there have been quite a few shipwrecks along it over the years. Besides the inevitable jetty and silos, there is a notice saying that in the old days they would stack wheat sacks in squares near the jetty until they reached 26 bags high which amounted to 5,300 bags in the stack. They'd then build a roof over the stack and wait for a ship to arrive to transport them.

Tonight we're staying at Streaky Bay, another waterfront caravan park. Just as we arrived it began to rain but it has stopped for awhile now. Time to walk along the beach perhaps.

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Photos

A glimpse of the Southern Ocean
With a pretty coral pea flower growing wild in the foreground.