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Published: April 16th 2010
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Chris at Whyalla this afternoon
Just spoken to Brenda re Tony's accident and heard about the cold wet weather in NZ! Hi all
We have enjoyed exploring the Eyre Peninsula, and tasted lots of fish and seafood, especially oysters. Pacific oysters are farmed in many places around here, and tuna , Murray cod and kingfish are caught at sea, held and fed in several areas in an aquaculture operation.
Chris saw a doctor in Ceduna and had blood tests done there, but he had to go back a week later for the results (the doctor refused to email the results!) We headed off to explore Eyre Peninsula, knowing unfortunately, we had to return to Ceduna. We headed south down the west coast, and stopped for 2 nights at Streaky Bay, where we had an almost beachside site. Unfortunately, the weather was cloudy with showers while we were there, and the FLIES were bad!! We did explore around the area, doing 2 tourist drives on dirt roads around the coast nearby. We saw a replica of a white pointer shark which was caught nearby and broke a world record. We got to Murphy's haystack just before a shower of rain went through. From there we drove south to Point Lincoln, stopping at most beachside towns on the way. We booked into the caravan
park there and got the site next to Joy and Geoff for 2 nights. The short ride on an electric boat around the marina was interesting, with lots of different types of fishing boats there. There are expensive canal homes, as the tuna industry has bought wealth to this area.
On Sunday we took the van and headed north up the middle to Cummins to the very good airshow. A guy parachuted down with a huge flad to open the show. We sat in the cool, cloudy conditions with Joy and Geoff and another couple from Perth we'd met, and watched the show with demonstrations of a great variety of aircraft. There were agricultural planes used for spraying, tuna spotting aircraft that had a forward and rear propeller - they fly out to sea to spot the tuna with 2 engines going, and turn one off while out there spotting - so they can stay out there for up to 8 hours, fire fighting aircraft showed how low they could fly, and a flying doctor plane also flew. The RAAF Roulettes put on and acrobactic display and so did some others, including Chris Sperou (13 times National Aerobatic Champion) who
was very good. Chris was interested in the Boomerang (1 of only 2 left in the world), which was designed and built in Melbourne during WW2.
From Cummins we headed a little further north and free parked that night. Then we headed west, and had a night at Venus Bay, another very good fishing town. From there, we headed back up to Ceduna for a night. Chris got his results (all OK), so we could continue on our way south east again. Our next night was at Lock, in the centre of Eyre Peninsula, we were the only ones in the cheap council run caravan park. There we were woken early by a scraping noise, so off we went for our usual morning walk to find out what it was. It was a front end loader going backwards down a tarsealed road with it's bucket on the road - to smooth the bucket and sharpen the blade!! We watched it loading roadtrains with grain from the horizontal silos which are covered by tarparlins, and the trucks transport the grain to the nearby vertical silos which are beside the railway. Most small towns in the area have these big silos. Later
that day we were able to see grain being loaded into wagons from another silo - it took about 2 minutes to load a wagon.
From Lock we headed south east down to Arno bay, walked on the wharf and saw more small fish and blue swimmer crabs being caught. There is lots of weed on the beaches from here on up the east coast of the Eyre Peninsula. We continued on , and did a dirt track past Point Gibbon up to Cowell. On we went to Whyalla, where we have stayed 2 nights, at a beachside site. There are several iron ore mines, a steel mill, oil refinery, tuna fishery and a cuttlefish spawning ground here. The bay here is quite shallow, and we walked this morning down to the wharf along the beach. We saw the 2 dolphins that live in the small boat harbour, and more pelicans.
After doing the lookouts and the infomation centre today, we drove out to Point Lowly, saw another lighthouse, and drove on to Fitzgerald Bay. Thereare quite a few nice freeparks in that area, so we will probably go there tomorrow with the van, and join the fishermen on the
rocks. We are almost at Port Augusta, only 76k and we will have circumnavigated Australia.
In Ceduna we booked our flights home - Adelaide to Auckland on 11th May and return on 3rd June. We plan to head to Adelaide for a few days on Monday (after the school holidays), to organise storage of the van while we are in NZ and get the car serviced. Then we will explore the Yorke Peninsula nearby.
Regars to all, and thanks for the news
Cheers Lynne
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tony
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phone call
good summary as usual lynne. Sea food sounds nice. Thanks for phone call chris. finger caught by log in the log splitter. hit a knot i think. had to wait till i was 60 to get a ride in the amberlance. unfortunately index finger right hand so can not use that hand as in a cast. have had plastic surgery and a skin graft but need to wait till next tuesday to see if it has taken. still hoping to fly to sydney wednesday but not sure yet. plan to be in melbourne friday. cheers