Well after being through one of the biggest dust storms we have seen and surviving it was time to leave Port Lincoln and start our venture of the Eyre Peninsular up the east side.  Our destination was for a free camp just outside of Port Neill at a place called Carrow Wells.  On our travel to Carrow Wells we stopped off at Tumby Bay for morning tea and to look at the silo art they have there.  Well worth a look at.  Tumby was another neat little town that you could easily spend a couple of days  at and do essentially nothing.

Our arrival at Carrow Wells was one of indifference to us both.  It wasn’t the most inviting of camp grounds, quite rough and no real designated areas to camp.  There were a couple of others there when we arrived so we thought we would give it try.  Of course the wind was blowing again so it was finding an area to park that would offer some wind resistance.  We picked a spot that wasn’t far from the beach so listening to the waves was nice at night.  As with the rest of the Eyre Peninsular we have seen so far it was very dry here and dusty.  It was a pity it was so dry as it must be a very picturesque place when its a bit greener. 

The toilet we had at Carrow Wells was an old thunder box toilet that I thought we had got rid of years ago.  Brought back memories of my childhood in Kalgoorlie.  Port Neill was another neat little town to visit as well.  As with all towns on the Eyre Peninsular they also had a jetty that was serviceable.  That is one thing we have noticed about all the places on the Eyre is that they have all managed to maintain their jetties.  Hopefully they can all keep them as they do add a lot of character to the towns.  We did try some fishing at Carrow but the less said about that escapade the better, lets just say we are both glad there are fish markets around the place.

After three days of wind and dust at Carrow Wells we decided our next stay at Cowell would be in a caravan park and hopefully a bit less dust and wind.  We have had it quite windy for a couple of weeks now and you do start to get a bit sick of it.  We stayed just out of Cowell at the Harbour View Caravan Park.  We had a huge site and also some respite from the wind so it was nice.  I was last in Cowell about 10 years ago with Renae when the ferry from Lucky Bay took you over to Wallaroo.  It doesn’t run anymore which is a pity.

Cowell is a good sized small town that you could use as a good base to see the wider area if you wanted.  There is a good range of shops in the town and you can get most things here.  We did a day drive around the area close to Cowell that took in Ubana Weir which was bone dry, the Cowell Wind Farm and May Gibbs Tree. May Gibbs was the writer of the Gumnut children’s books and was from the area. 

Whyalla was our next destination from Cowell.  This was an easy 105km trip up the highway.  As this was also the first weekend of the school holidays we thought we should book in as well as we weren’t sure how busy it would be.  We booked into the Discovery Park on the Whyalla foreshore.  Its in a great location and we couldn’t have got any closer to the water or we would have been in it.  We actually had a break from the wind which was very nice.  The weather for us while in Whyalla was perfect.  The walk from the caravan park along the foreshore to the marina was nice and we were rewarded with seeing dolphins playing in the marina.  The dolphins are now a permanent attraction as they wait for the fishing boats to come into the marina.

There were a few things to do while in Whyalla.  We booked ourselves onto a Whyalla Steelworks Tour which was quite good.  You can’t get off the bus but they take around everywhere so you do get to see a lot.  We were lucky to see coke being taken from the ovens which was quite impressive.  The Whyalla Maritime Museum is worth a visit.  It is also now home to HMAS Whyalla that was built in the local ship yards in 1941.  Hummock Hill Lookout also gives you a good view over the city and across Spencer Gulf to the Southern Flinders Ranges and to Point Bonython where the Santos gas works are located and Point Lowly Lighthouse.   There was also the Loaded Dog  sculpture by sculptor Andy Scott and is based on the poem by Henry Lawson.

We did drive out to the Whyalla Conservation Park and climbed Wild dog Hill.  After a pretty bouncy road into the park we were hoping for something a bit special, but unfortunately this wasn’t to be.  The climb was very easy and the views OK but probably not really worth the drive out.  We did quite enjoy Whyalla and it did remind us a bit of Port Hedland.  Most of the buildings were a very brown looking from the iron ore dust, must be a BHP thing to leave this type of image on places.

From Whyalla we drove to Port Augusta and the end of our trip through the Eyre Peninsular.  We had booked into a station stay about 20km out of Port Augusta called Catninga Station Stay.  You have to book prior to arrival, which is fair enough as you wouldn’t want to drive out and be turned away.  The camping area only has about 8 spots and you are quite a distance from each other, which we like.  The actual camp areas are a bit rough but there is plenty of fire wood around and we could at last have a fire at night.  We did enjoy this stay very much but the only real down side was that the wind had picked up again and with this the dust.

A drive into Port Augusta and we visited the Wadlata Outback Centre and the Arid Lands Botanic Gardens.  The Botanic Gardens were quite good but being so dry here at the moment we weren’t able to see it at its best.  Unfortunate as you could see it would be a lot nicer.  The Wadlata Outback Centre was over $40 to enter which we both thought was a bit steep for what it was.

At Catninga Station we did a walk from the homestead to the mountain hut.  This was an 8km return walk through some pretty interesting country and a great walk at the top to the hut.  We had packed a picnic lunch so had plenty of time to do the walk.  With the country around here so dry at the moment you do wonder how some of the stock and wildlife are surviving.  Everyone’s doing it tough at the moment.

This was our last stop for completing our trip around the Eyre Peninsular.  We have enjoyed it, just a shame it is so dry here at the moment.  We did think it would be a lot greener.  Might have to come one time in the spring to see it in healthier times.  We are doing a bit of a detour from here down towards Adelaide for a day and get some new batteries for the caravan.  We are having trouble with our present ones holding charge overnight when we free camp.  Discussions with some experts over the phone are pointing towards our batteries being suspect.  Anyway we will get some new ones and see what happens, then see if our dealer in Perth is interested in some form of reimbursement after we get the old batteries tested.

Hopefully from here on we get a bit less wind, be a nice change.  Some rain as well to wash the van a bit would be nice also.

Leaving Ceduna was the start of our journey around the Eyre Peninsula.  We were heading south from Ceduna down the west coast then going up the eastern coast.  We weren’t really sure how long we would need to feel that we had had a good look at the Eyre Peninsula, we were giving ourselves six weeks and hoping that would be sufficient.

Our first stop from Ceduna was Streaky Bay, just a short 111km drive down the Flinders Highway.  We booked into the Discovery Park on the foreshore of the bay.  This park is in a great location and was very big and also very busy.  Our site was a little way from the foreshore but was very big so we weren’t complaining.  Streaky Bay is quite a nice little town and they have a great jetty as well that shows off good views back towards the town.

We did a  couple of drives from Streaky Bay being the Cape Bauer Loop Drive and the Westall Way loop Drive.  These took you past some of the great coastal scenery that is all along the Eyre Peninsula and seems to be what it is mostly famed for.  We also did the drive to Murphys Haystacks which are weather worn granite rocks in a paddock.  At Point Labatt they have built a viewing platform to allow you to view some Australian sea lions.  These are one of Australia’s most endangered marine mammals and the worlds rarest sea lions.  We feel very lucky to have seen them.  It was a very popular visiting spot as well.    Didn’t try our luck with any fishing though this time, thought we would give them a fighting chance for someone else.

Elliston was our next destination from Streaky Bay.  Just a short 127km drive further south.  We stayed at the Waterloo Bay Tourist Park.  It was quite small but as a bonus it had grassed sites which felt like luxury.  We hadn’t seen any grass for a couple of weeks and it was a great change.

Elliston has a pretty good tourist drive called the Anxious Bay Clifftop Drive that showed some great views of the coastline and is dotted with some permanent art work along the way that you can stop and look at to break the drive up.  It is only about 12km in total but fills in a couple of hours if you stop a bit.  We also drove back up the coast a bit a visited the Talia Caves.  These were OK but we were expecting something a little bit more, still worth the drive though.

Next stop from Elliston was the Yangie Bay Campground that was in the Coffin Bay National Park.  This is run by the National Parks and is quite well set up with facilities.  We had a great site that had excellent views out over Yangie Bay.  We did a couple of short walks from the caravan to a couple of small lookouts.  One thing we have noticed since being in the Eyre Peninsula is how dry it is here.  The bush really does need some good rains to bring it back a bit.  While camped here we put out a plastic container of water and it was crowded everyday with birds and kangaroos wanting a drink.  You did feel sorry for the animals living in this dryness.

We did a day drive around the Coffin Bay National Park on their 4WD tracks and this was a ride and a half.  The roads were pretty much terrible and if you weren’t being bounced side to side in sand tracks you were bouncing over rock tracks.  We had our tyres down to 20 psi to get through the sandy sections.  The drive along Seven Mile Beach was pretty cool and reminded us a bit of Fraser Island, it was also nice to do some smooth driving as well.  We drove out to Seasick Bay and Point Sir Isaac.  Not sure if we would worry about coming back to the National Park again.  A lot of being bounced around for not a lot a great scenery.

Port Lincoln was our next destination from Coffin Bay.  This was a quick 63km drive for the day.  Love these short drives.  We have booked into Port Lincoln for a week so time to chill out for a while.  There is also a Bunnings here so that makes it a must stop town for a while.  We were thinking of staying in the Lincoln National Park for a couple of days, but as it is so dry here at the moment the dust is pretty bad if the wind picks up so we decided to stay in town for the week and just do drives.  We booked into the Port Lincoln Tourist Park.  This is a very large park that has great views out over the water.  The sites are terraced so most people have pretty good views. 

I was surprised how big Port Lincoln was, I thought it was going to be smaller than what it was.  They have a great marina development here that has some very nice houses.  Must be a lot of rich fishermen living here.   One day we filled in with a drive to the Lincoln National Park.  The park is fairly large but there are not a lot of roads to follow.  We called in and looked at some of the campgrounds, walked up to the top of Stamford Hill for some nice views over Port Lincoln and surrounding waters then drove out to Donington Beach to the lighthouse.   While at Donington Beach we were lucky enough to sea a pod of around 10 dolphins about 60 metres off the beach swimming around and jumping out of the water.  It looked like they were schooling fish up for feeding.

The weather forecast for one of our days here was for high winds so we decided that we would drive to the museum at Koppio.  The museum gets quite good reviews so we thought this would be good on a forecast crappy day.  Well a crappy day was only half of it, it was absolutely terrible.  The dust was so thick, we haven’t seen a dust storm this bad for a long time.  Being so dry here the paddocks were literally being blown away.  Some of the wind gust were over 85kph.  We did enjoy the museum but our planned picnic lunch didn’t happen.  It was a good thing we had closed up the caravan before we left.  The next day we had lovely blue skies and I’m stuck inside writing a blog.  We do things the wrong way round sometimes.

Tomorrow we leave Port Lincoln and start our journey up the east side of the Eyre Peninsula.  Hopefully it is as good as the west side.  Apart from being so dry at the moment the trip so far has been very nice and we are seeing some pretty spectacular coastline.