Edithburgh, South Australia, AustraliaYesterday we decided to stay another day in Walleroo. The weather has been glorious, a load of washing needed to be done and a day of not so much sightseeing, would allow me to catch up on a blog! So we had a cruisy morning and went to check out Moonta and Port Hughes in the afternoon. We also visited the copper mining heritage area, but more of that in another blog.
Today we have enjoyed going off the main highways of Yorke Peninsula and visiting some towns we didn't visit in 2014. We travelled down the west coast this time and tomorrow it will be up the east! Yorke Peninsula is relatively flat and the highest of the gently rolling surface, rises only 120 metres. There were so many big flat paddocks and precision farming has been embraced here as well. It is 260 kilometres from Port Pirie to Cape Spencer and the width of the Yorke Peninsula varies from 32 - 56 kilometres.
Moonta was our first town, only 16 kms from Wallaroo and then Maitland a further 35 kms. Maitland is a reasonable size town and the service centre for the productive agricultural area. From Maitland we took a road to Port Victoria on the coast. The small town has a very rocky beach, a jetty, hotel and general store and that's about it. It does have a caravan park and there is a little Maritime Museum at the edge of the jetty. We had morning tea on the cliff top overlooking the jetty, with great views out to Goose Island. It is said the town is a paradise for fishers and divers, with eight shipwrecks around Wardang Island which has to be the smaller of the islands off the coast. For over 70 years, grain was loaded onto magnificent sailing ships bound for Europe via Cape Horn. The Pamir and Passat were the last two ships to leave in 1949 on the last commercial voyage worldwide. The little museum is open on weekends and has memorabilia and photos relevant to the history of the two ships. There were display boards outside the museum.
We took the triangle road back to Spencer Highway and Minlaton, thinking it may have been another billy goat track! But it was a lovely new upgraded road that had not long been completed. Minlaton's claim to fame is that Harry Butler the pilot was born in the town. We knew all about Harry and the Red Devil from our visit in 2014. It's always good when there is something new and in 2018 a sculpture of Harry was unveiled. I believe the display information about Harry has also been updated. I wonder how annoyed they were to receive the display board and see that areonaut was spelt this way! This is my 2022 story.
Captain Henry John (Harry) Butler AFC was a farm boy from the Southern Yorke Peninsula who followed his dream and became one of South Australia's pre-eminent aviators. A self-described aeronaut he served in the Great War with the Royal Flying Corp as a Senior Flying Instructor specialising in aerobatics and combat training culminating in him becoming Chief Fighting Instructor. For his service Captain Butler was awarded the Air Force Cross (AFC). After the war Harry planned to make his living through flying and with a partner they purchased and shipped two aeroplanes to Australia. The Bristol M.1c C500, later known as the Red Devil was one.
Butler carried the first airmail over water in the Southern Hemisphere, from Adelaide to his hometown Minlaton, across the Gulf of St Vincent in the Red Devil on 6th August 1919. As a pilot Butler captured the hearts of South Australian's with daredevil stunts and achieved fame for his patriotic efforts to promote peace loans. The plane was used to promote passenger air flights and during a test flight Butler and a mechanic crashed south of Minlaton in 1922. His funeral was attended by thousands. Sadly he had only been married for two years. The plane was beyond repair and it was later sold to Captain Horrie Miller who refurbished it and renamed it Puck. It was later donated to the people of Minlaton.
Staying on the highway our next stop was Warooka, where we read some information panels that had been placed around a rotunda in a park. I thought there was some street art at Warooka, but nothing jumped out at us apart from a very old tank and a couple of street light posts with some artwork! We fuelled up in Warooka and our next stop was Corny Point Lighthouse. Corny Point is a very small town with a caravan park and Dunn Point only a few kms further on, is on a cliff edge and has lots of holiday homes. Many were built very similar to our two storey beach house at Drummond Cove that is no longer!
We were pleased we rattled over the 4 km rough road to visit Corney Point Lighthouse. We needed to walk a short distance as there was no provision for caravans. I noted from the distance dial that it was 100kms west to Tumby Bay and 110 kms across Spencer Gulf to Port Lincoln. The sea lions like the rocky shores of Corny Point, but there were none enjoying the sun today. We thought the tide was perhaps a bit low. The Corny Point Lighthouse was first lit on the 1st March 1882 and it has flashed it's signal across Spencer Gulf ever since. The Lighthouse was automated in 1920 and has been controlled and maintained by the Commonwealth Lighthouse Service since 1915.
After a bite of lunch we came back to Dunn Point to take the road to Marion Bay. It was a quick visit there. A photo that proves we were there and a walk on the jetty at the bottom of Yorke Peninsula. The countryside is not that interesting and we are sure it will be our one and only visit to Marion Bay! From there is was back up the 51 kilometres on the Yorke Highway to Warooka. We had done the full circuit of the toes and half the foot of the boot!
It was a short drive of 21 kilometres to Yorketown to get a photograph of the Water Tower that was painted in 2021. There are six Water Towers that are no longer in use on Yorke Peninsula and they make up the majority painted in South Australia. The artists do an amazing job at transforming these ugly grey cylinders. The Yorkshire Water Tower has an agricultural theme, with wheat and canola along with a RFDS plane. It took the longest to complete, 37 days, but it was done by a single artist, Jasmine Crisp and painted entirely by brush. The mural was completed in March 2021.
The final leg of our journey today was the 15 kilometres to Edithburgh. There was still some stone fences on a few properties as we had seen in 2014. We could see the water tower out in the paddock as we drove in, but couldn't see how to get there. When we asked at the caravan park, they didn't know whether you could take a caravan to it. They knew you could get there by car, but thought it might be a bit tight with a caravan. So Pete unhooked! After all, the murals on the water towers is the main reason we have come down this far again. We found there was plenty of room to turn a caravan around! Wouldn't you think the park owner/ managers would make it their business to know? Golly there's not that much going on in this town! The tower is well worth a visit. It is gorgeous. It has been said that it seems to be the “poster child” for silo art Yorke Peninsula! It pops up on social media often. It is very nice with it’s leafy sea dragon and other marine critters. It even has a very colourful cuttlefish. It was the first tower painted by Mike Makatron, this time assisted by Conrad Bizjak and Dylan Butler. It was completed in March 2021 after 15 days of painting.
There will be more water towers tomorrow as we travel up the east coast of Yorke Peninsula. I talked with an elderly SA lady (well she did appear to be older than me) at the Yorketown tower. She had decided to go for a drive this week and look at these towers and have a bit of a holiday. When I told her of the silos we had visited on Eyre Peninsula and where we were going, she said she felt guilty that she had not seen them in her own state! She said "I must do more of this. When I have a spare week, I am going to take myself on self drive holidays"! We enjoyed the lovely evening in Edithburgh. We had a front row caravan bay, enabling us to overlook the Gulf of St Vincent.
Heather Allen
2022-05-14
Pam do you know how long some of these artworks are expected to last and who is responsible for their maintenance into the future? Just thought i would ask the question. Looks like you are still enjoying your travels and keeping free of covid.
pamandpete
2022-05-14
Hi Heather, Have no idea re your question. There are now over 50 Australian Silo Art locations and the first one completed are the silos in Northam. So I guess you should be able to ask the question in WA. We are still enjoying travelling SA, keeping to ourselves and wearing our masks whenever we are in a building. We are going to Renmark tomorrow for 2 or 3 days, before we start our journey west.
Jenny
2022-05-15
Loving the silo art and the water tanks. Many of those are new since our trip in 2019. The frames are a great reminder of where you've been too. Keep enjoying.
PJ
2022-05-21
What an awesome blog about wandering around the Yorke. It is such fun reading about the places I have visited and stayed at often. With all of that new artwork to see I will have to head down that way again. Graham and I spent weeks in the caravan park at Edithburgh - they have a lovely mosaic trail to Sultana Point that I love too. Thanks for bringing back such special memories.