Judy & Brian Tour Oz: Streaky Bay SA, Ceduna SA, Matthew Flinders, Nicolas Baudin

On the move again. Out the gate at 8am and heading west. Pretty easy run - oops mind the big roo that just crossed our bows - crash stop - well, jam the brakes on and slow down as much as a 4 ton rig can slow down at least - thankfully it kept going and didn't turn around an jump bak like they do - or have 3 mates behind it.

Stopped at Streaky Bay for a rest. We we thinking of staying here on the way back but it looks almost as dull as Coffin Bay, so perhaps not. On and on to Ceduna, which strikes you immediately as being a nice sort of place, its bigger than the rest, but not much, but the extra shops and people make it seem more alive. The van park is filling up fast, its already 3/4 full with fishos who come to all of these places and stay a few weeks and months and just go fishing every day.

Speaking of fish, we bought some ‘caravan packs’ of the local KG whiting and prawns, suitably cryo-vacced and frozen for our little fridges - now that is understanding your market place. We grabbed some, and some unfrozen ones for tonight as well, prawns and champagne. Nice

Ceduna ia a railhead and port, even if it only has one siding and wharf. They ship out a 150 odd boat loads of gypsum, grain and salt a year. The salt is just stacked in a great heap and pushed around with a budder. A boat was being loaded with something and we suppose the dozer was pushing the salt heap into a hopper and onto a conveyor belt.

Heap-a-salt. Ceduna SA

Sea Melody. Ceduna SA

At Pinky Point they have a memorial to those lost at sea that looks a bit like a model light-house. The people we were talking to had come to see the names of their uncle who was lost just a few years ago,

Memorial to those lost at sea. Ceduna SA

They also have a decking that looks out over the water and two low islands way of in the distance. The islands are St Peter and St Francis, named by Francois Thyssen and Pieter Nuyts, Dutch seamen that got blown off course a bit in their boat the Gulden Zeepeart in 1627. Next blokes along were Matthew Flinders, and shortly after the Frenchman Nicolas Baudin in 1802.

St Peter and St Francis islands out there somewhere. Ceduna SA

There is a suggestion that Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s travels are loosely based on the ship being blown off course and these are the very islands in the story...

We did some shopping, have to fill the larder before we hit the Nullarbor, had afternoon tea of tea and hot-x-buns and went for a walk out along the big long jetty. The wind was just howling along the shore, so much so that the birds sitting on the jetty fencing just need to lift up their wings and they go soaring off. They can just hang there above the rail without fluffing a feather, quite weird.

On the way back in we saw this little guy, a juvenile Pacific Gull, with people approaching. All we had to do was wait and snap away when he took off