Eyre Peninsula East Coast

After leaving the Lincoln National Park we travelled through Port Lincoln itself and then a further 33 Km up the Lincoln Highway before turning back toward the coast and continuing for another 15 Km until we reached a small bay known as Red Cliffs. Had we not turned off the highway the next town would have been Tumby Bay, 19 Km further north. We found out about Red Cliffs from a tourism brochure that we picked up somewhere along the way and haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else.

Red Cliffs Camp Site

 Many of the populated bays on the East side of the Peninsula are protected at the south end by some sort of rock formation or Point. The town or camp sites are most often built at this southern end to gain protection from the strong winds. The northern end of the bays are usually open to the ravages of the sea and are usually not inhabited. Red Cliffs is one such Bay and in its case it has a rocky headland that protects the southern end of the Bay, where the campground is located.

The Red Cliffs campground is operated by  church group - can't remember which one. They charge just $10.00 per day for an unpowered site or $15.00 per day for a powered site. There is also scheme water available and an amenities block. The camp site is located right on a beach which is safe for swimming. A couple of the powered sites have absolute beach front location while the remaining eight are one row back from the beach. As you can probably tell, it is a small campground.

 Red Cliffs Camp Site: Small, a little dusty with very basic facilities.

Our site, next to the amenities block.

A calm, shallow beach - great for kids.

The campground is pretty basic - The sites are dirt, the amenities only get cleaned every two or three days, the water pressure is so low it has to be boosted by a pump (which turned out to be right next to our site) and the couple of cabins on site are pretty simple. That said, for the price it is excellent value and the small, intimate size of the place would appeal to many people.

The fishing wasn't much good. Everyone says that the whole of the Eyre Peninsula "goes off" for fishing and Red Cliffs is apparently no different. As with almost everywhere we have been so far, the poor old King George Whiting had copped an absolute flogging over the Christmas holiday break and those who had fished while we were there caught nothing. I had a go but all I got was three undersized Whiting and three Herring.

If you aren't into fishing, snorkeling, swimming or walking along beaches then Red Cliffs probably isn't the place for you. If you just want a place to kick back and relax and enjoy the ocean views and tranquility. then this is a good place for it. We mostly did the latter and took the opportunity to fill the water tanks in the van. We stayed for three days after having initially booked for two.

From Red Cliffs we popped back out to the highway and covered the 19 Km to Tumby Bay fairly quickly. The arrangement for our accommodation at Red Cliffs was that we were to pay it at a residence in Tumby Bay, on our way through. We had a look around Tumby Bay first. Like pretty much everywhere we've been so far, Tumby Bay was a smallish town (again, located at the southern end of the bay) with a nice beach, the mandatory jetty, a smattering of shops and an independent supermarket, a servo, pub, caravan park and so on. Like everywhere else, the fishing was supposed to be legendary.

Location of Tumby Bay

Tumby Bay is postcard pretty, neat as a pin and would seem to be populated by a fairly high percentage of retirees. We decided against staying there as we were keen to do some free camping after spending a few days in a "caravan park" style situation at Red Cliffs. So, we found the house where we had to pay for our previous three night's stay and then trundled out of town - having forgotten to take so much as a single photograph.

From Tumby Bay we headed just a few kilometres further north on the Lincoln Highway before, once again. turning back toward the coast to Lipson Cove. Lipson Cove is a popular, completely free campsite. It is listed in the very popular "Camps Australia Wide" books. The Cove was used by the early settlers as a a port to export copper ore that they were mining in the hills that surround the Cove. You can see the old workings and the remnants of the jetty from the campsites.

Campers can set themselves up right on the beach, or locate themselves a bit further back on gravel surfaced camping bays. If you can't get ocean views here, the place must be full.

Lipson Cove Location

The Cove is, once again, populated (by campers) at the southern end and quite windswept and rugged at the northern end. The beach is clean white sand and pristine turquoise water. The beach is about 800 metres in length before a rocky outcrop delineates it from the next bay. Once again, the fishing is purported to be excellent and I did try from the beach, but without luck. The beach itself is not as sheltered as most of the other places that we have been and children would need to be supervised closely if they went swimming there. This lack of protection was one of the reasons why I didn't bother going out in the kayak.

Looking from our camp site to the beach at Lipson Cove.

When we arrived, this beach was covered in camps.
They all went home for the start of school the next day.

On our arrival it was quite windy and even a little on the cool side but around 4:00 PM the wind started easing and by 6:00 PM it was perfectly still. This enabled us to enjoy daylight saving the way it is meant to be enjoyed - lounging around outside the van in light clothing, having a quiet bevvy or two. The calm conditions were to be short lived and about one o'clock in the morning the wind blew in with a vengeance, even blowing down the annex on the caravan about thirty metres from us.

When we awoke we obtained a wind forecast from the Internet and it wasn't looking too good. Three or four days of very strong winds were expected. We decided that Lipson Cove was just too exposed to ride out the wind that was forecast and so we packed up and headed further north. If we we going to endure a few days of crap weather it may as well be in a place where we can watch a bit of telly, or grab a coffee or whatever. (No TV reception at Lipson Cove.)

The first town we came across was Port Neill. Port Neill is a very small town, once again located at the south end of a bay and having the mandatory jetty and caravan park.

Port Neill Location

Not much to see or do really, especially as it had started to rain lightly, confining us to the car. So we moved on, heading further north. The next town on the way north is Arno Bay. Arno Bay is also very small but impeccably neat and also has the standard attributes that we have become used to.

Arno Bay Location

While Arno Bay was very nice and no doubt would be a very serene place to stay, we couldn't really envisage being stuck there waiting for three or four days for the wind to blow itself out. The shoreline here, just as it has been everywhere else we had been on the east coast of the Eyre Peninsula, was very exposed and cops a hammering from the predominately onshore winds. We figured that the much more sheltered bay at Cowell would be a better proposition.

By now we were starting to feel a little guilty about bypassing so many places that would obviously be really nice given better weather and by continuing on to Cowell it would mean that we would have covered over half of the east side of the peninsula in just one day - after having taken weeks to do the west side. Pushing the guilt aside,we drove north for another fifty minutes or so and were soon in the main street of Cowell.

Cowell Location

Cowell is situated on a very large bay, not unlike Venus Bay or Streaky Bay on the west side of the peninsula. At this point on the east coast, the Spencer Gulf (between the Yorke and Eyre Peninsulas) is starting to narrow considerably - so much so, that a ferry service between Lucky Bay (15 minutes from Cowell) and Wallaroo (on the Yorke Peninsula) was established to shorten the travel time from the Eyre Peninsula to Adelaide. The ferry service is temporarily suspended while they await the arrival of a new boat, but should resume during March of 2012.

Cowell is a fair bit larger that the towns that we had been to earlier in the day and is a popular tourist destination. The large, sheltered bay makes it a mecca for fishers. It is also a centre for supporting the agricultural industry and has thriving aquaculture and oyster industries. The town is large enough to support two pubs and has the familiar array of small shops and an independent supermarket that have been a feature of most of the towns that we have been to. We were pleasantly surprised to see a bakery and a butcher in the town.

The main street of Cowell

Neat as a pin. You won't find litter anywhere.

There are many beautifully restored or maintained old buildings.

The town is, as are all of the towns in this part of Australia, neat, tidy and litter-free. The Council has made a nice park near the jetty and has equipped it with very clean dunnies, some shade shelters and free BBQ's. The entire area is grassed and has some shade and would be a nice place when the weather is fine. The boat ramp and other facilities for the fishos are very good.

The family-friendly park

An art installation at the park

Naturally, there is the mandatory jetty and we weren't at the caravan park more than about ten minutes before being regaled with stories of how many Blue Swimmer crabs were being caught at the jetty at the moment. There are no swimming beaches at Cowell and the bay is lined with mangrove swamps near the town.

We had the choice of two caravan parks. One is about three kilometres out of town and the other is pretty much at the centre of the town, next to the mangroves. We chose to stay at the one in town, reasoning that we could walk to the pub for a "countery" or to the shops if we chose to. We booked for three nights.

The crap weather continued, as forecast, for the next three days and was predicted to do so for at least one more day, so we spent our time shopping, dining at the pub, going on some of the tourist drives  (there are three of them centred around Cowell), doing odd jobs on the caravan and car and getting some photographs and video shot. I probably should have spent some time on this blog but somehow couldn't raise the enthusiasm.

The weather was so crap that none of the diehard fishos at the caravan park put their boats in the water, so they had to kill time by standing around, scratching their balls and telling lies about the fish they had caught at Cowell on previous visits. It was actually funny to watch some of them. They were so bored that they polished or cleaned everything in sight - twice - and wandered around aimlessly, annoying anyone silly enough to say g'day to them.

I also met Vince and his wife (apologies, but after we left the park I realised that Vince never actually introduced you, so I don't know what your name is). They also own a Kedron caravan and we were able to swap some ideas for improving how some things work. As it turns out, Vince's wife has been following our travels on this blog and was wondering if we would bump into them somewhere.

We had a nice meal at the pub, at the bakery, purchased some meat from the butcher and some groceries from the supermarket, so we contributed to the local economy while there.

One of the Pubs does a spit roast every week. This week it was a pig,
cooked on the verandah so that passers-by can watch.

While waiting for the weather to remember that it is actually Summer, we decided that a day trip to Whyalla would kill some time and enable us to finish our trip up the east coast without having to move the van again. We had already been to Port Augusta on several occasions, so there was no real need for us to go there and so going as far as Whyalla would be enough. This meant that we could go across the Peninsula from Cowell to Elliston, or Venus Bay or Smoky Bay and finish our vacation on the more sheltered side.

Whyalla is an hour's drive north of Cowell

Whyalla Location

On the way to Whyalla you pass quite closely to a working iron-ore mine at Iron Duke. It is iron, from mines such as this, that sustain Whyalla. It has a history steeped in steel manufacture, ship building and iron-ore exporting, although the ship building ceased over 40 years ago. The town also has a legacy of iron-ore mining - dust. The town is liberally coated with iron dust which has the effect of giving it a dilapidated look. Equally, much of the inner-city housing is "standard mining company issue" and very dated looking.

Fortunately the dust is being removed in a concerted program of cleaning, starting with the public buildings and amenities. Although looking a bit shabby, beneath the veneer of dust lies a vibrant community and a sense of optimism for the future. The town gives the appearance of being busy and economically sound.

We drove the streets (remember, the weather was crap), visiting the Tourist Information Centre, where the very friendly staff gave us some ideas of things to see and do. The Information Centre is co-located with the Maritime Museum and the naval vessel, the "Whyalla", is also located at the Centre. The ship can be toured by appointment.

We actually braved the conditions for long enough to take some video and photographs from the old gun emplacements that now served as a lookout right above the town centre. These were not your usual sweeping views of beautiful beaches that we have become so used to seeing. From this lookout you have views over the OneSteel steelworks, the dusty town centre, the port facilities and the marina. You can also see what passes for a beach but it is pretty ordinary. Views over Spencer Gulf were spoiled by the low cloud, making it difficult to see the other side of the gulf.

Yep, Whyalla is a steel town.

Difficult to see in this picture, but everything is covered in a layer of red dust.

After looking around at a few more sights, we ventured to the other end of town to the shopping centre to get some things that we haven't been able to get at the smaller towns. We had a very nice lunch at the shops, washed the car in a car wash that fitted us in even with the kayak still on the roof-rack, purchased some more books (in case the weather stayed fowl) and managed to get most of the things on our shopping list (and a few things that weren't.)

Having satiated our need for some "retail therapy" we piled back into the clean car (first wash since we left home two months ago) and headed back to Cowell for our last night there. Even though the forecast was not indicating improved weather, we felt that we needed to move on.

And so, after taking a month to see the west side of the Eyre Peninsula, we had taken less than a week to see the east side. We know that we haven't really done it justice, but the weather can bugger up the best of intentions.There is no doubt in our minds that the east side could be as interesting and spectacular as the other side - we simply didn't get the weather to do it. Even as I write this update, three days after we left Cowell, there has been just one day of good weather since we left. So here we are, back at Venus Bay. The wind has been a little gentler, but here it is offshore - reducing the chill factor and improving the comfort factor a lot.

We are booked to stay here for two weeks, but may not stay here that long as we are having problems with the water here. The water is very saline and has actually killed the membranes of our reverse osmosis water filter. We can no longer filter water and do not wish to run the saline water through the plumbing of the van. This means we have only about 120 litres of drinking water left and even less general purpose water. While we can get by with showering at the caravan park's amenities and also doing our washing using the park's machines, it will be drinking water (or the lack thereof) that will force our hand.

At least the weather has been good enough that I've been able to get out and get amongst the fish. Fresh King George Whiting, freshly caught squid and hot chips for dinner tonight - Yum!