Advertisement
Published: October 7th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Ceduna map
This map was at the airport - the Oysterfest is held on the foreshore between the boat ramp and the sailing club. To view as a slide show, select Full Image and use the >> to scroll through. Introduction
Every October long weekend there is a festival, called "Oysterfest", held in Ceduna, a town on the west coast of South Australia. It had been a decade since our last Oysterfest (pre-Dan) so we thought it was time to indulge ourselves, despite Dan's often passionately-expressed dislike of oysters (which he has never tried).
You can read other accounts of the Ceduna Oysterfest at this
web site and learn more about Ceduna
here and, of course in
Wikipedia.
How to get there
It is a long drive (over 800 km from Adelaide) so, as we only had a short stay planned, we flew to Ceduna on
Rex and took a taxi to our accomodation. The Oysterfest activities are throughout the town, but focussed on the foreshore between the jetty and the Sailing club.
Our route map is
here showing that flying it is 550km.
What happened ...
The festival was a hit - great weather and amazing oysters - yummy.
We started the day with a street parade with bands, vintage cars and other floats. We saw our first 'live' Studebaker in the parade.
Then it was down to the foreshore where marquees, stalls and rides were set
Flying out
Adelaide suburbs below up. One stall was by the Kite factory who brought down some of their big kites to fly on the beach (very reminiscent of the Semaphore kite festival).
The theme was the 'Pearl of the Outback' but basically Oysterfest is a relaxing family event with music, competitions and lots of fun. There were stein holding competitions, (and an equivalent iced coffee holding competition for the kiddies), oyster eating competitions and more. Dan went in the sandcastle building competition but seemed to have most fun swimming out to the pontoon in Ceduna bay with Jasper. Peter and Ken caught as much of the AFL grand final in the beer tents and the Ceduna sailing club.
One of the highlights of the weekend were the incredible acrobatic plane demonstrations (3 a day) by Chris Sperou. Apparently Chris can
cut a ribbon strung across the Ceduna jetty with a low pass of his biplane! Amazing. He certainly did some amazing stunts - check out the photo of Dan in the water with the airplane flying over.
On Sunday we went along to the grand final of the South Australian Indigenous Australian Rules footy competition. Unfortunately the Ceduna Roosters went down to the Mallee boys, but it was
Rex airlines
Landed at Ceduna - after a one hour and 10 minute flight. a great game and quite a spectacle. The oval was so dry that as the players ran, the dust flew out behind them, like their feet were on fire. Afterwards we popped in to visit John Gascoyne to get a copy of his recently-released book,
A touch of magic, about Indigenous football on the Eyre Peninsula.
As far as walking went, we did beach walks in and around Ceduna. The water is very clear and the beaches clean. Besides seagulls, there were
Pacific gulls and huge sea eagles. We watched a
Sea-Eagle hunt down a Pacific gull using an aerial 'dog fight' technique over the sand dunes.
So all in all - a fabulous weekend, with warm friendly people, allowing us to relax and enjoy the very beautiful location and food of the far west coast.
Dan says ....
Hello readers!!!
There are old pilots
And there are bold pilots
But Chris Sperou is a rare thing
He is an old AND bold pilot!
Oysterfest was wicked. There were many rides but the most crazy was Aba Baba Magical flying carpet. It looked so scary - it swung like a pendulum and then started spinning round and around and around.
I got to do a lot of things at the Oysterfest, such as getting a showbag (I got the police detective one with a machine gun in it which had a bi-pod), watching the giant kites soar in the sky, swimming with Jasper to the pontoon, and some other fourth thing....
Ouch, my foot! Sorry, my feet still hurt from when I went walking without shoes on Shelly beach - it really was very shelly. The shells were alive (you could see their tracks in the sand) and very painful.
On the next day I pulled on my wet suit and went boogey boading with Jasper and the other kids in the surf on Ken's private beach. We had a bush barbeque that was really tasty.
And now for this week's joke ....
Q: How do clams communicate?
A: They use the shell-a-phone.
(Image from
http://www.ceduna.net, used with permission).
Advertisement
Tot: 0.081s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 26; dbt: 0.0371s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
David Francis
non-member comment
Fantastic Photos
Love your time and effort Diana Pete and Dan