Whyalla

---

We have been carrying eggs with us for the last two weeks, so we finally had bacon and egg muffins for breakfast this morning before heading off to the HMAS Whyalla for the 11.30am tour. We actually arrived about 10.30am so had plenty of time to visit the museum beforehand. Our tour gave us access all areas despite a warning when booking yesterday that some areas would not be accessible due to maintenance works being carried out. Fortunately, there were no works being undertaken today. After the tour we did pop back into the museum to watch the video about the installation of the HMAS Whyalla as a land-based museum after she was decommissioned. The hulk only cost $5,000, but $1.5 million was spent setting her up as a museum!

Afterwards we headed into the town centre. We were in the main street trying to decide where to buy food when Bernie spied a police officer going into a café. He decided that was as good a recommendation as we could get so we picked up some delicious toasted sandwiches from the Whisk Away Café and took it to the Hummock Hill Lookout to eat. We were distracted in the parking area by a man chasing an errant toilet roll down the hill. We think it must have been his emergency roll that had fallen out of his vehicle? After stopping to let him collect it we thought we could drive around to park on the other side of the summit. Um, no, that would be actually just taking you down the other side of the hill. Fortunately there was a small parking area and some bench seats where we could eat while overlooking the marina and jetty. Tcht, we so wanted to sit in one of the shelters on top of the hill where we could have taken in the view over the steelworks!!

After lunch we visited National Trust property Mount Laura Homestead. They were a bit upset there today as someone had broken in last night. Nothing was taken, but a couple of doors were damaged and needed to be repaired. They are doing it tough as it is without lowlifes causing malicious damage to their buildings. I don’t know what is going to become of so many of these historical properties and collections in a few more years. All the collections seem to be getting so run down due to a lack of volunteers. We still see things that we remember from our childhood or remember our parents talking about them, but pretty soon these collections will seem completely irrelevant unless the National Trust can find ways to breathe new life and interest into them? All down to the $$ I guess as enthusiastic volunteers can only do so much.

We went back to Hummock Hill for a photograph looking down onto the steelworks. So very industrial!! We had already spied the ice-cream truck down at the marina when we ate lunch so we could not resist driving down to the marina for ice-cream o’clock and a walk out the jetty. It’s not a picturesque wooden jetty, but a very modern concrete and steel one. While we were at the marina a boat came in and was met by a pod of dolphins. We think the fisherman may have thrown some fish or leftover bait to them as they followed him all the way into the boat ramp.

Our last stop in Whyalla was at the Flinders and Freycinet Lookout. As already recorded yesterday, Matthew Flinders was the first European to navigate and chart this part of South Australia in 1802. The following year Louis-Claude de Freycinet navigated and charted the isolated coast for the French expedition led by Nicolas Baudin. The memorial to the two explorers included some rosemary bushes so we plucked a few sprigs to go into the potatoes for dinner tonight!

We drove back to Point Lowly via Fitzgerald Bay and the Freycinet Trail. The road into Fitzgerald Bay was bitumen, but the road along the coast from there back to Point Lowly was unmade and very rough in places. Thank goodness we made it back to Point Lowly before the weather changed or we would have been sliding around in mud! With the wind howling we were very glad to be back inside the beach house. Thank goodness the BBQ is in a covered area and the weather didn’t play havoc with our dinner plans. The potatoes roasted with rosemary made a delicious side to our barbecued steaks and oven-cooked chicken wings.



Steps for the day: 9,696 (6.6km)

---