Fleurieu Peninsula January to February 2015

After getting all things back were they should be , clothes all clean again we set of down the road to Rapid Bay . Its just a short trip from Jervis Bay along the west coast. Council run camp site on the ocean for $7.00 per person a night, hot showers toilets park any where. By the next morning a saturday the place is full.
Rapid bay used to have a mining plant and a very long jetty for deep water for the ships loaded with limestone from the open cut mine.We walked around the nearly empty town , mining houses empty, general store closed, just a few residents and holiday homes.
We are here because from the old jetty and south is a marine park and around jetty in seagrass beds are leafy sea dragoons , and we wish to snorkel as I cannot dive yet even if we could afford it.There is a new jetty a couple of metres from the old just outside marine park you can fish from and steps down where the scuba divers leave from. There is also a wrecked ship further out from jetty they dive on. It was cold and windy our first day so we only walked and spoke to some divers who told us we would be lucky to see the sea dragons when snorkelling at the moment, as sea a bit rough.
So even though we did not see the leafy sea dragons we did enjoy our stay.

1 st february we move to Gawler as we have arranged for my tests, xrays at the hospital.
The park we stay at is old and full of resident people not many travellers, but it has new owners who are trying to improve it.
I sat at the hospital for 2 hours for x rays and results, as I,am not from here I had to wait around for results. The hospital was also supposed to fax the results and report to doctor in Benalla.I found out 2 days latter they had not, they had given everything to me. We were already on the road passing through small places with no post offices, in fact no shops open , just mail in to a wall of post office boxes. So it will have to wait until Port Augusta to fax report and wait until Ceduna to find out if I need to do anything.

One night at Yaka, have a post wall and a shop that opens to sell craft at weekends. We stay next to dry river in local council run camp site which has a very busy couple seasons. We were the only ones there now though.
Next little town run park was Murray town same deal not many people in town anymore.
 
Friday we head to Alligator gorge to do some walking around a very narrow gorge but over two hundred steps to get down there and the same to get back. 

This another 2 hour test on me and my fitness, it took a bit to get up , I had couple of little stops. Before we could get in here we had to leave the van at The General store at Wilmington, this store dose every thing, fuel , groceries,rural supplies, no fax machine though.
As we move the car , after our walks to gorge and lookouts, to find shade for lunch , I see out of the corner of my eye something move. By the time we stop on the down hill dirt road and jump out cameras in hand it had taken off, lucky for us it was up the nearest tree. It was a beautiful big goanna and we got good photos. 

After we got back and collected the caravan we go to take off and wonder why so hard, well I had forgotten to take the small wheel chocks out and put then away,they are of no use anymore. We head to camp at Hancocks lookout over looking spencer gulf great views. We first to arrive then 2 other vans join us at the lookout for the night and watching such a beautiful sunset.


We were going to stay the next night at Horricks pass but this so open , no trees next to road traffic and it is finally getting hot, to 43 today. This made it easy to say we would spend the weekend at a camp on a working sheep farm. Lots trees, power to cool van in 43-44 heat.

Spear creek park is not to far from Port Augusta on the edge of the flinders ranges.
It is a working sheep farm with 2 brothers running it but have managers I the van park bit. These people are from QLD. They were travelling Australia and stopped to manage this place last year for a few months and are now back for maybe the year as another couple who were running it did not stay. I do not know why its beautiful here, I can see us doing this soon after we have seen the bit of WA this trip is for. Just think 3-6 months in a place like this then what ever for the rest of the year maybe somewhere else.

This place has big gum trees, places to walk into a gorge and the edge of ranges all only 20mins away from Port Augusta, they don't get frosts but it does get cold in winter and very hot in summer.
We went into shower block and had a nice shower and as I was coming out to get the mop to mop floor [ as you do in some places, mop supplied] I saw something move on the floor in the semi dark. I had taken camera with me so we could try and find the tawny frog mouth we could here up in the trees, so I grabbed it and took photos of our first scorpion. Not the best photos had no time to change settings before it disappeared. 

We had a good couple of days, walking early morning and in the evening, but still did not get photo of the frogmouth. It probably was asleep during the day in a tree close by the van, but they so much look like part of trees we missed it.
 
We headed into Port Augusta on Monday to collect mail, fax my report and to pick up the new cover we had ordered for the rooftop tent. The zip on the bottom bit attached to the base had lost a couple of teeth and the makers don't sell just this bit, only whole cover. We rang a canvas and blind place and it was going to cost nearly the same and longer off road to fix so the whole cover was ordered. The top of cover was getting a bit stiff so would need to be replaced soon.
We got cover and replaced it while in the carpark- and it fits better not so tight. Maybe the makers had listened to people that it was a tight fit and made it a bit bigger.
We had no reason to stay here so went to the Australian Arid lands botanic garden as it had been years since we were last here. The first thing we see near the walk in gate was a central bearded dragon sunning itself. We did not see much else a few birds and of course lots of plants. We had lunch in the car park then moved van to red cliff lookout beside where we pulled up to walk to the bird hide was another dragon on top of a bush surveying its domain.

We drove out of Port Augusta to Iron Knob to stay the night. This is a mining town so we did not do too much walking, just stay in area provided for travellers. Mining Iron ore in a new area we saw being made last year on our dash to Vic.
We only moved short distance to Kimba for our next night so stopped at all the rest stops on the way and walked.
As it was over 40deg we had decided to Stop at Kimba as it has a swimming pool. When we get there we find out that it is open during afternoon for school kids and not to the public until 4pm and only until 6pm. We are so glad when we could get in but within 15 mins the little pool was full of kids so we got out after wasting $5 each to get in. We went around to the towns sport ground and reserve where parking for travellers is provided for a donation and $1 each for a shower, we have our own shower and do use van park ones to save our water but not this time.
Wednesday 11 february
We move onto Pildappa rock as this is supposed to be as good as wave rock in WA, we did see last year. It is another very hot day and only a couple of other cars pull in but leave so we park on the shadier side for the night, and have a cold water bucket shower each.
On top of the rock under some large stones in the shade is a couple of young kestrels , every now and again they launch themselves into the winds created by the shape of the rock. They just float there and then take off and fly a lap of the rock, return and go back to there shade, then off they go again as if they are competing with each other for the longest time they can stay just floating in the updraft. This happens for a couple of hours then as the sun begins to set they are gone and we climb to the top to take sunset photos. No actual path up just an arrow to say this way up.

Another bucket shower before bed as it is still bloody hot. Just think I was saying it was too cold for swimming 2 weeks ago, takes abit to get used to heat again.

Thursday 12 February
We are heading towards Ceduna slowly . It starts off not quite so hot , but just incase we decide to go via Streaky Bay and their fenced off area of the jetty for swimming. Fenced for sharks. We could stay on the Eyre hwy inland or head across to the flinders hwy and the coast run to Ceduna. Both roads work out to about the same distance so coast wins.
We come across a stretch of road that had 4 live shingleback lizards about 2km apart. All out sunning themselves on the side of the road. Plus a couple that went too close to the road. Must be good food area.

  Stop and snorkel and swim off the jetty in Streaky bay , we could not do this last time here ,last may june as too cold.

We go on after lunch to Haslem where we also stayed last time , and this time got to snorkel off their jetty too, but in the open sea no fence . This is a small old fishing town who allow people to stay in an area for a donation to the upkeep and cleaning toilets.
 
Friday 13 February
Never usually think about friday 13 but our laptop is not working properly and then our wifi decides it does not want to work either. We buy time from the big4 van park in Ceduna and spen the afternoon on the mobil phone with apple trying to fix laptop, with the help of apple connecting to our laptop with the parks wifi. Have no luck with the telstra wifi it still says its connected but does nothing and the closest telstra shop on our way is in WA at Esperance.
So we will do what we have to do here in Ceduna before crossing the Nulabour again, shopping, washing ,checking car and van for anything that could work loose, filling water tanks and all that stuff. And of course as it is 43 deg go swimming at beach.