Advertisement
Published: March 24th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Yorke Peninsula and Innes National Park - 28th January - 31st January 2010
Leaving Gawler after almost 2 months was an emotional day. I have enjoyed the time there so much and now I am once again back out on the open road... all by myself again. It's always hard the silence for the first few hours but I soon got back into the swing of travelling again and was looking forward to living back on the road. Heading up to Port Wakefield and then making tracks down the eastern side of Yorke Peninsula towards the very tip, Innes National Park. I don't know much about this place but it was strongly recommended.
I cruised down the eastern coastline of the Yorke Peninsula stopping in at a few of the small coastal towns of Ardrossan and Edithburgh along the way. It's all about fishing and crabbing it would seem around here. The blue swimmer crabs are apparently easily caught here in season (year round but best in summer) and the King George whiting and southern rock lobsters are also in abundance. Some of the best seafood in South Australia is on the Yorke Peninsula. Every town has a town
jetty and I was getting abit over walking out on every jetty but they all seemed so inviting I just couldn't help myself. The waters of St Vincent Gulf are a beautiful turquoise so each jetty walk was spent peacefully gazing out over the bay while trying to dodge the fishing hooks being cast by the numerous fishermen (or fisherpeople)!
It's a fairly long hike down to the very tip of the Yorke Peninsula and Innes National Park but it was a beautiful day and the drive was easy. The landscape is mainly farmlands of which wheat and barley are the main crops, so the countryside was mostly an endless view of yellow fields. It was late afternoon when I finally arrived at the stunning Innes National Park. The yellow farmlands disappeared to become coastal heathlands. Innes National Park is a mixture of rugged limestone cliffs, secluded beaches, peaceful bays, salt lakes and yes a jetty! The National Park has a number of campgrounds to pick from and I decided to stay at the Pondalowie campground just near West Cape Lighthouse. On my drive into the campground I stopped at the Cape Spencer Lighthouse. The coastline is just breathtaking!
From Cape Spencer you can look south to Kangaroo Island in the distance. I met my first emu out on the headland, just wandering down the road.
West Cape Lighthouse is another excellent viewing area and you start to get an appreciation of the treacherous coastline that the early explorers had to navigate along. Hence there are over 40 shipwrecks along this coastline with some wrecks visible on the beaches while the others are lying on the ocean bed just off the coast. Pondalowie Bay is a calm and sheltered bay filled with fishing boats and along the shores of the Bay are small wooden fishing shacks. It was really quiet while I was here, I saw hardly any people. The beaches were empty and I enjoyed wandering along the water's edge with only the Sooty Oystercatchers to keep me company. The beaches here are popular for surfers and I noticed a number of cars with surfboards sticking out. A few surfers were searching for a wave but with not much to offer they mainly scanned the beaches from the many lookouts along the coast. I later read that there is some excellent surfing here but it's not for
the beginner or wanna-be surfer like myself. Most of the breaks are classed as heavy to medium surf with reef breaks and some scary looking beach breaks to keep the crowds away. The waters here are also excellent for diving with a number of wrecks to explore with a huge diversity and abundance of fish and crustacean species. These southern waters are also home to the incredible leafy sea dragons but with water temperatures way below the warm coral reef water temperatures I have been fortunate to dive in for the past 2 years, I wasn't brave enough to get in there.
Gypsum mining was the main industry here in the early 1900's with the township of Inneston set up in 1913. Gypsum was produced here until 1930 and during this boom phase this isolated township had a population of around 500 people with a school, post office, bakery, general store and tennis court. The Stenhouse Bay jetty was built to enable ships to berth and load the bagged gypsum. The township of Inneston is long deserted now and all that remains is the ruins of this once thriving town. Some of the old building have been restored into
lodges and you can rent them out for holidays. I wandered out onto the Stenhouse Bay jetty and ended up stubbing my big toe, blood everywhere! And if that wasn't enough, I stubbed the other big toe only moments later. I'm starting to not like jetty's!
Wounded and bleeding I headed out of Innes National Park with a quick stop at Marion Bay with some really impressive looking beach/ holiday mansions, and started making my way up the western side of the Yorke Peninsula. I stopped in at Port Victoria to try my luck walking out on another jetty (I just can't resist). It's just so peaceful and relaxing watching the fishing boats and anglers around the jetty. The waters are crystal clear and I wish they were just a few degrees warmer. I arrived at Wallaroo at the very top of Yorke Peninsula and checked into a campground right on the water. Wallaroo is home to the Spencer Gulf prawn fleet and is a very popular holiday town with a multi-million dollar marina development. Wallaroo is also where you can catch the Sea SA car and passenger ferries over to Lucky Bay on the Eyre Peninsula.
The
foreshores of Wallaroo are made up of wide white beaches which most people seem to enjoy driving their cars out on. There is ofcourse a jetty and a netted swimming area which was packed with groups of teenagers showing off. Being a Saturday, the jetty was busy with people fishing and crabbing and I watched as crab pots were pulled up with bait gone but no crab! On all the jetty's there are big signs that lists all the fish and crabs and the allowable size and bag limits. A few people were pulling up crabs that were under size and this lead to the poor little crab being launched high into the air back into the water below. It was fun to watch the people on the jetty, some were set up for the whole day with armchairs, drinks, kids and radios buzzing away as they enjoyed their Saturday morning fish. I don't know why they call fishing a sport, but maybe I should think about starting up this 'sport', looks pretty easy!
I decided that I had had enough of jetty's and fishing so I headed up through Port Pirie and turned inland towards the hills and
Emu
Innes National Park the small pretty little township of Melrose set amongst Mt Remarkable National Park in the Southern Flinders Ranges. The drive through the countryside is a nice change from the tiny port towns of the Yorke Peninsula and the drive into Melrose is very picturesque. The temperature is creeping back up into the 40's and I was hoping to get some hiking in through the National Park. I stayed at the Melrose Showgrounds for a very nice $5 per night with showers and toliets. Mt Remarkable National Park has some great hikes and the river beds are home to some really impressive looking River Red Gums. Unfortunately the temperature didn't drop and some of the walks were closed due to fire dangers. It was too hot to think about hiking, and really only possible if you set off on the tracks no later than 6am which I would like to say I was up for but not on a Sunday morning with my paper to read. I instead enjoyed my Sunday morning reading the paper in the park at Melrose and sipping on my iced coffee drink. I have become rather mellow haven't I? I did eventually drag myself away and
back on the road for the drive back to Port Augusta and my next adventure, Wilpena Pound in the Flinders Ranges National Park.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.116s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 12; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0767s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb