Venus Bay

Venus Bay Location

We arrived at Venus Bay and booked into the caravan park for two nights. By the time we had finished setting up the van and been for a quick walk around we had decided to extend that to a week. By the time we were halfway through that week we had extended for another three days, making it the longest time we have stayed at any place so far.

Venus Bay town is located on the shores at the southern end of Venus Bay, the bay.

The town is small and exists mainly for tourism. The bay itself, as stated in the previous blog, is more like a lagoon. It has a narrow opening and then widens considerably.

The opening to the sea is actually the bit to the left. Everything to the right is the bay.

There is a big, sandy, island straight out from the town and we intend to paddle across in the kayak and have a picnic lunch over there (probably tomorrow.)  To get there we will have to paddle over three separate, narrow, very fast flowing channels between the sand shoals. This will require us to aim quite a bit to the right of the island in order to make landfall on the island.

We did get there! Taken from the beached kayak over at the Island.

There is a jetty here and this is one of the places where the pilchard boats bring their catches so that we West Australians have mullies for bait.

A pilchard boat came in on the third day that we were here and disgorged almost 50 tonnes of pilchards. Watching the boat unload its catch was very interesting - they literally pump the fish out of the hold into tanks on wheels that are hand-pushed along rail tracks on the jetty, to an awaiting truck.

Naturally, quite a few of the fish spill out during the various stages of the process and these are swooped on by the throng of people who have gathered on the jetty to watch the event. Any that fall in the water are grabbed by seabirds. A huge slick of fish bits, blood and scales forms down the tide from the pilchard boat and some of the fishos anchor their boats in the middle of it, trying to catch the fish that are attracted by the bonus food.

Aside from the fishing fleet (three trawlers have been tied to the jetty since we have been here) there appears to be little else to sustain the town.The general store is also a cafe/restaurant, fuel station and liquor shop and the caravan park also has a small selection of general merchandise and serves food.

The General Store/Liquor Shop/Cafe/Servo

The Caravan Park Shop/Cafe

There is no school, no hospital or Doctor's surgery, no Police Station and no Government agencies of any sort here.

The town water supply is from bores and is not fit for drinking, so the houses all have rainwater tanks. The shops both sell 10 litre boxes of water and have them stacked high on the floor. At least they have mains power.

Our site at the caravan park is in the front row, with nothing between us and the sea shore (apart from a couple of small wheelie bins). We have enough room to drive the van in forwards, unhitch the car and move it forward and still have enough room for passers-by to walk in front of the car. We have put the solid annex end piece on to create a wind break and have also put up one of the side screen for the same reason. This creates a nice roomy, sheltered area to sit in outside of the van.

The view straight out in front of our van.

From our vantage point we can watch the coming and goings of all of the dinghies that put to sea, trying to catch their quota of King George Whiting. On day two I took the kayak out and, following some advice given to me by our next door neighbour, proceeded to the edge of one of the channels to drop a line. After an hour or so of nothing much happening I decided to move to some ground that looked similar to where I'd caught whiting at Smokey Bay.

The move paid off immediately and I finished up with ten KGW and a solitary Herring. You've got to be happy with that! Must have been beginner's luck because the next two outings resulted in just one fish each time.

The scenery here is quite spectacular. If you walk from the edge of the water on the bay, up the hill through the town to the top, you find yourself overlooking the open ocean. This side is lined with limestone cliffs, still part of the Great Australian Bight, that have been etched out of the land by the constant pounding of the sea.

From this high-point you also get an idea of just how big the bay is and the deeper, dark coloured channels stand out against the turquoise of the shallower, sandy bottom. Indeed, this place is just made for aquatic pursuits.

The weather Gods have been kind to us and we have had only one very brief rain shower since we arrived. The temperatures have been in the mid-twenties during the day and high teens at night. We are expecting a 34 degree day tomorrow, before the weather cools again. Like most coastal areas, it is pretty windy here. Thankfully the high cliffs on the other side of town offer considerable shelter for the bay, so that even though the wind is strong, the seas are relatively calm.

More about Venus Bay in the next blog.