Date 19th June - 23rd June
Cowell, South Australia
Weather - 7c to 17c & clear
Total Distance Travelled - 4,100 km
Staying 1 Night, The Commercial Hotel
We sadly said good bye to beautiful Ikara-Flinders National Park - it’s a place you could easily spend a week exploring by car, foot or cycle - another place we will definitely come back to one day.
We drove at a constant pace to get down to Cowell which is located on the start of the Eyre Peninsula, 350km from Wilpena Pound. We were going to go stay in Whyalla but decided that we wanted to go a bit further and we are staying at a pub (cheat night 🤣🤣) - and they have a silo art (again 😂).
We have also decided staying 1 night per place is a lot of work with a camper trailer, we need to stay at least 2 nights possibly 3 nights. So a bit of re- scheduling happening. We have also been given a lot of advice by fellow travellers on where to stay and visit. Everyone has been saying we must turn left at Norsman in WA not right - so we think we are going to do that. We are going to update the itinerary page (when time allows), to show where we have been. It's a lot different to what we thought it would be.
We did have a look around Whyalla- it’s an industrial town on the coast (large steel works), 4th biggest town in SA. Still a pretty white sandy beach, but with a massive steel works in the background.
From Cowell we were going to skip the coast road, and take the inland route, but quickly decided we were missing too much. So once we got to Lock, we headed west on a 50km dirt road to Elliston with massive farms either side - plus a lot of nothing here.
Once we got to the coast we arrived at a little seaside town called Elliston (377 pop.) - we drove down to a costal town called Elliston, and saw the Mara Sculptures on the Cliffs.
The pano is called The Tub - part of the loop.
Streaky Bay, South Australia
Weather - average 7c to 17c
Total Distance Travelled - 4500km
Staying 3 Night, Islands Caravan Park
Drove to Streaky Bay, beautiful little town on the water. Found a brand new Caravan Park called Islands (6 weeks old) - a bit out of town. It has amazing views across the bay, with amazing sunsets 😂😂😂.
Next day we decided to do all the tourist coastal loops - the Cape Bauer loop to the north, where we saw the "whistling rocks" and blowholes, followed by the Westall Way loop drive to the west - highlight was the "Granites" - beautiful orange coloured granite rocks on the beach, amazing clear water.
Pano of The Granites
We drove about 50km down a dirt road to the Point Labatt sea lion colony - an amazing, but windy experience, looking down on them from the viewing platform, 50-70 metres above. Michelle couldn't stop taking photos of the babies. (Hit the black arrow to see the slideshow).
We stopped on the way back from the sea lion colony at a lake that looked purple. Michelle couldn't resist putting the drone up to have a look.
Last stop on our self-drive tour was Murphy’s haystacks, a collection of inselberg rock formations about 1.5 Billion years old. They looked other-worldly, like something out of The Hobbit.
We arrived back at Streaky Bay to a drinks invitation from the neighbours, which was very nice.
Next morning, our neighbour asked if we had a C-spanner to tighten the caravan hitch, as he had the same one as ours. On inspection, we discovered that our hitch nut & washer had disappeared, likely due to all the dirt road driving the previous day. We are so lucky that our neighbours asked us about the C-spanner or our next day departure or drive could have been disastrous and could have ended our trip badly. Hence we spent the day tracking down the nut, washer (spares of them) & a C-spanner, which we eventually found in Ceduna. Thus the day was a bit of a write-off, but we got to see a spectacular sunset over Streaky Bay.
We are heading for the Nullarbor tomorrow - it will be an interesting trip. Long straight roads with not a lot to see, but that's the cool part because we drive one of the longest straight roads in Australia (140km without a turn)!
See you on the Nullarbor.
Cheers,
Mike & Michelle
Comments