Eyre Peninsula

Thursday, October 17, once again it was off by 7am this time heading towards Ceduna. As my dust whirled behind me I left my friends at Carclew farm and headed out along the dirt track back to the number one highway which circumnavigates Aust. I decided I had time to visit a few seaside town on the Eyre Peninsula before spending the night at Ceduna with a prearranged couchsurfer. I bypassed Port Pirie, drove through Port Augusta and Iron Knob before turning off the bitumen at Kyancutta I hit the dirt track again traveling 89km south to Elliston. As I came off the dirt back to the bitumen there was an amazing letter box at the entrance of a farm. Someone had made a masterpiece, a life size model aeroplane manned by its own mannequin pilot.

Elliston was a quaint seaside town with an amazing mural on the beach toilet block. I just had to take a photo of it. This plus their lovely beach were the main attraction. Next stop was Venus Bay where I took a break and a walk along the cliffs around the bay. The ocean was turquoise and aqua blue (funny about that the ocean being aqua). While on this walk I saw a pod of dolphins feeding while gulls circled, swooped and squawked overhead. I’ve heard that the dolphins round up the fish driving them to the surface then feed on them. I thought this is what they might be doing which of course would attract the gulls too. Unfortunately I was too far away for a photo so I just enjoyed the moment. Streaky Bay was next along the coast then Ceduna. Here I drove around filling in a bit of time before arriving at my host’s home at 5:30pm.

Venus Bay South Australia

Ceduna was quite a large country town for being in the middle of nowhere. It was here I saw the most Aboriginals on all my travels. I suppose I should have expected this as the town was situated near a few Aboriginal reserves.

I had an interesting stay with my Couchsurfing host. He was a young guy of 27yrs who lived with his folks and sister in a house that his parents inherited when his grandfather died. The family had moved into town from their farm and now worked driving trucks for the farmers and the department of main roads. Because I had arrived a little early my host was not home from work. I was greeted by his sister who had just had an appendix operation, she let me in and rang her brother as my phone didn’t have any reception. This is due to our major telcos who has monopolised the country areas not giving any other mobile carriers access. One of the reasons I will not go with this particular company. I don’t like bullies!

My host arrived a short time later with his work mate. They had been fencing with the dep. of main roads. I was warmly welcomed and introduced to his mother who had been resting after work and his father who arrived shortly after with his mate, they were all around my age. His parents were church goes like myself. We sat around the kitchen yarning, and exchanging stories of our travels and experiences as I sipped on a glass of water and they sculled stubby after stubby of beer which a friend has won at the pub. They certainly were characters and typical country folk or as my host said yobbos.

There’s was a big house with not many bedrooms so I was offered a mattress on one side of the lounge floor while my host slept on another mattress on the other side. It was now that I was really glad I had got to know the family a bit and it was not just a house full of young guys, otherwise I may not have felt safe to stay.

I hope you like my efforts to provide a map of the area I travelled. 😉  I’ve also added a few maps to the other posts.