Week 5 South Coast of South Australia

For more pics see this link: 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59119397@N04/sets/72157626419457107/




We finally made it into South Australia. I was really excited about going to Robe as this is where I had done my 4x4 driving course and the scenery around this part of the coast is outstanding. We crossed the border into SA and headed to Southend, a very small hamlet (township) right on the coast. Mum went for her first swim as it had been too cold in Victoria to swim (even for her which is unusual). We spent two nice days exploring the Canunda National Park and I took mum off-roading for the first time and we went to across some lovely sand dunes to a remote beach. It was a really nice day out. 

As the weather was getting colder and colder we decided to skip the rest of the coast and head straight up to Yorke Peninsula. 

Innes National Park, Yorke Peninsula

For more pics see: 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59119397@N04/sets/72157626419659637/


We checked into a nice caravan park at Port Brougthon and mum got excited of all the amenities that they had - hot showers, BBQ, camp kitchen, TV room, fish cleaning area and even crab cooking! Needless to say, this town is renowned for good fishing so we went to the local supermarket and got some crab nets and put the alarm clock on 6 am for the next morning to try and catch some crabs. As we did not really know what we were doing, we got chatting to some locals who helped us out. It’s amazing how helpful the local aussie people are when they realise that you are a tourist and trying something new. In the end, we ended up with the local town mayor coming to help us out and gave us some gear so that we could catch some crabs. Excellent! We went home with 11 crabs of legal size and must have thrown in a further 70 or so, there was definitely no shortage of crabs. We made some friends on the jetty as well who were also staying at our caravan park. They were also ‘gray nomads’ and they invited us over for a glass of wine at night in their luxury cruiser. This couple had a massive ‘fifth wheeler’ and had sold off their swimming pool business and was how living on the road for 9 months of the year. They even had a boat with them and was heading up to the Northern Territory to go fishing for barramundi, my favorite fish. 

After successful crab fishing we headed to the south tip of the Yorke Peninsula to Innes National Park. This is a very beautiful park and we saw emu on the road as soon as we got into the park. Mum says...... ‘I though emus only existed in the cross words’ - classic! I guess this is Australia and there are some wonderful animals here. We camped for 2 nights in the national park and the one night we got surrounded my bogan (chavs for you english) tattooed tradie aussies who were there on a stag do which made an entertaining evening the other night we had dinner with a very seedy man who I could have done without. We were happy to leave Innes National Park just to get rid of him. 

Before leaving we spent an amazing day on a famous fishing beach and I caught a ‘double header’ ( 2 fish on the same line) of salmon. It was a memorable day. 

Then we headed back to Adelaide to have a final night in a nice restaurant before mums flight back to Sweden. It was nice to get back into a city after the time in the bush and it was sad to see mum leave.