All things must end

So this post finishes off our trip to South Australia.  It covers our last day based at Glenelg and the drive back to Carwoola.

Friday 25 May 2018

We began the day as always with a dog walk.  As this was to be our last morning walk and we had nothing else planned for the day, we made the walk a little longer than we have been doing.

We also changed arrangements by crossing to the EastSide of the Patawolonga and looking back at the reflections of the houses on the far side.

 We then headed a bit North before crossing Military Rd and heading to the beach.  On the site of what used to be Marineland.  The Surf Lifesaving organisation for SA have their HQ here.  The sculpture looked quite pleasant ...

.. but got to "interesting" when looked at closely.

• Why is the figure second from the left wearing a skirt?  Is this a mother rushing to pull her toddler out of an unfenced pool?  Could the designer not think of any other way to show the figure is female?
• Is the atrophied right leg on the fourth figure representing people with a disability?
• Do they now only rescue people by running?  (To make the point another way, why don't they have figures swimming, paddling or in a Zodiac, which are IMHO the main business of lifesaving?)

They are still of course attractive images, and perhaps the last point is taken care of by the images on the building?

 On the top of the dune the 4 experimental wind turbines are still present.  They were all motionless today as the wind was dead calm.

In case you wonder about the strange blue colour in many of the photos from today, there is no need to panic.  It is a natural phenomenon called "the sky".  It was very enjoyable to not have solid grey cloud!

There were large mounds of seaweed on the beach!

When I first migrated to Adelaide we used to go to this stretch of beach as it was not heavily used.  I had thought it was due to it being under the flight path for planes landing and taking off from the airport, about 1km away.  Others thought it was because the punters had to walk ~100m through sandhills to get there, rather than parking on a road and walking 10m down steps.

A few bits of interesting public art have been installed along the esplanade.

 Surfs up - only about 20cm, but it was up.

 Some more reflections in the Pat.

 As we toddled back through the 'burb we noticed that the baby hire SUV had gone - possibly making a delivery somewhere.  In the same street the tradies were back, possibly even more than yesterday.

Being a nosey sod I asked what they were up to.  It turns out they were installing a node for NBN Co..  No wonder the project is so expensive if it takes a mob like this 2 days and a minimum of 6 blokes to install each node!

Here is the total walk.

We then then put in some energy to packing a fair bit of our stuff ready for departure tomorrow and went for a stroll along the Torrens Linear Park.  We used the opportunity to fill up with dieselat what we expected to be better prices than Ouyen or Wagga.  I then discovered an establishment called Dulwich Bakery (apparently a chain in Adelaide).  They did a Chunky Steak Pepper pie which was very good indeed: I rated it as a 9+ - the pepper taste could have been stronger and the crust possibly a bit moister, but it was pushing the envelope of 10!

The start was amusing seeing these horses wading the Creek: the leader stood in the water for some time stirring with one hoof and we couldn't work out why it did this!

 One of my objectives on this outing was to photograph a Musk Lorikeet.  They were most uncooperative but eventually I managed to capture this snap.  It has taken a while to work out the pose of the bird because the red stripes are in a strange position.  I think it has actually got its head twisted so it's almost hanging vertically.

After this walk Frances needed some retail therapy so was dropped off at  Harbour Town and Tammy and I went to check cormorant diversity on the breakwater at Glenelg.  All three black and white species (Little Pied, Pied and Black-faced) were present but neither Little Black nor Great.

Returning to the house it was time to load most of the car so that we could get an early start.  This done under the supervision of the standard poodles across the road!

Here is a photo of the house.

After all of this I was pretty knackered  so was early to bed.  I couldn't seem to get the temperature right, and was able to worry about villains breaking into the car and stealing our kit.  So a very poor night's sleep.

Saturday 26 May 2018

We were both awake at 0430 so got up, loaded the rest of our stuff into the car, took Tammy for a toilet patrol and were on our way by about 0525.

The road works at South Road weren't as chaotic as yesterday (no cops, for a start) but still almost incomprehensible.  At least we got through in the direction we wanted and headed for the Hills.  Eventually got on to the Expressway and as we approached the Eastern side of the Hills could see a reddish tinge in the sky.  This got gradually more and more impressive (clouds do have some benefits) and Frances got this snap somewhere between Murray Bridge and Tailem Bend.

 As a result of the camera being set on auto-flash and the windows being a tad grubby, other photos were not that good.

I drove to Ouyen, our traditional first stop 400km into the drive and then Frances took over.  I dozed for a bit and then took a few photos.  The aim of this one is to show the mallee growth form of the eucalypts, with several stems branching out of the ligotuber.

 The road is called the Mallee Highway and here is a photo of a traffic jam on same.

 I also took a photo of the display of fuel consumption on the car.  It only shows 4 hours so the very low start point is where we were mucking about going on the very hilly and winding road to the start of the freeway.  It is then quite stable.

 As we got close to the Murray at Piangil a salt pan was visible: almost dry.

 Despite this someone has planted a massive pistachio orchard around Piangil.  It seemed to run for at least 10km and went well over the (sand)hills and far away.  My guess is at least several hundred hectares.  As the info page says " The water from the Murray River provides the source of irrigation." Together with the vast expansion of the cotton paddocks on the Hay Plain no wonder that the irrigators are objecting to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

On the opposite side of the river the paddocks looked hard to distinguish from the salt pan.

We stopped for a driver swap about halfway from Balranald to Hay where I took an image of the Bluebush between cotton paddocks.  In case you wonder what a flat line looks like, check the horizon.

We had developed some theories about the emus changing their behaviour as a result of the cotton farms .  We came across several groups of 1 or 2 in the first few kilometres from Balranald and then started to come into the cotton, near Maude.  There we spotted a big flock: Frances estimated at least 20, perhaps 30.

Frances took over again just after Narrandera and I took a snap of the info display which is now really showing what steady fuel consumption looks like. I think the little uptick (low consumption) at the start is going through Piangil and Tooleybuc at 80km/h and the downtick is probably accelerating away from the driver swap!

 The two fill-ups at Ouyen and Wagga gave 9.15 and 9.33l/100km respectively.

Because we were both a little tired by this stage I decided to change our normal route on rural roads from Murrimbateman, rather twisty and wildlife ridden, and came into Canberra.  The road works around the light rail project were appalling, but fade into insignificance compared to South Road in Adelaide.

We recorded some temperatures as we drove along: it was quite impressive to see how much colder the inland was.  We'd heard a forecast maximum of 23^oC for Hay but thought it ridiculous when we were at Pinaroo.  However it was a nice sunny day and the forecast was right on the money.

Back to index page

Coffin' at the cost of Oysters!

We began the day with a walk to the Dutton Bay woolshed.  A resident was gathering the roo poo from his lawn so visitors didn't track it into his house, and he invited us to walk through the revegetation area on the low dune.  This avoided some boggy bits (in one of which Frances lost, but regained,  her shoe last time we did this).

No dead dogs were found on this walk.  This Kelpie spotted Tammy and just laid down in front of her.  After being thoroughly sniffed she got up and followed us around.

This shows (most of - the roof doesn't matter) the Dutton Bay Woolshed which is being restored as part of a tourist attraction.  It doesn't look any different to when we were last here, 6 years ago.  The adjacent campground was getting a bit of action from caravans so I presume the owners of the areaare doing OK.

As we strolled on the jetty the large dog accompanied us.  This stroll gave us good views of a stingray swimming under the jetty.

We went back traversing an area where the seaweed had washed up.    I liked the three colours!

After a bit more to eat we headed to Coffin Bay to do parts of the Oyster Walk along the foreshore.  We did the red bit (probably 3km return) before lunch and the yellow bit (2.5km) after.

It was showering as we went out on the morning walk so I didn't take a photo of the bunch of people sat under this shelter eating oysters.  The deal is to wade out to the platform and capture oysters - presumably getting trained in shucking - and munch.

I presume the plastic owls are there to dissuade gulls and cormorants from crapping on the deck.

The walk is very good.  Near the start point it goes very close to people's houses (I would be interested to see how close the houses were built to the boundary of the block) which could be very strange in Summer when the houses are fully occupied.  A bit further on some nice mosaics of the usual suspects - starfish etc - had been set into the path,

I was rather surprised to see a Sacred Kingfisher still present.  As we saw one on the afternoon walk, about 3km from here so I think they were different, birds they must overwinter rather than heading North,

A flower!  Hakea cycloptera.

This was an attempt to get the Hakea flower and a 'nut' in the same image.  At least the mulch on the ground is in focus!

We had to turn at the edge of town as the bush area there is owned by the Department of the Environment  so dogs are banned.  It is surprising how Council Parks are generally so much more sensible that the ideologically driven State Government gulags.

One of the new McMansions adjacent to the walk.  Very architectural with a galvo kangaroo to the left of the deck.

A view across the bay.

Closer my Pelicans to thee,   I guess they are aso dissuaded from the oyster munching area by the owls!

This is the scene outside the cafe from which we got some excellent crumbed whiting for lunch.

I suspect the waders are those provided for the oyster munchers.  I am not sure how much they charged for the full oyster munching 'experience' (cough, splutter - I do apologise for that use of the word) but they were like unto a wild bull for the shucked items in the shop.   $17.50 per dozen for opened oysters is about $7.50 more than is charged in Canberra .  So they were left in the fridge.

The second stroll passed a good number of Quandong (Santalum acuminatum) bushes with very unripe fruit.  As well as anything else, there were a number of very informative signs along the walk.

A view down the bay towards the sea

A clip of some of the closer dunes.

These monsters are, as measured on Google Earth, 10km away, which I think explains the hazy quality of the image,

At the close of the walk a Singing Honeyeater appeared!

Back to index page

The Whalers Way

Our first foray this morning was to the Reserve at the end of Dolphin Way.  Probably not the most successful walk ever, mainly because the small dog took the lead and the track isn't that obvious (understatement).  Our routes out and back diverged quite a bit as shown by this eBird track.

Very few birds were around in the bush here for reasons not known to me.  As we got back to the house (about 800m North of the Reserve) a pair of parrots flew into a small tree.  On checking, they were Mulga Parrots. I returned with my good camera and got some pix.  By that stage they have into a Pomegranate tree.

Our main plan for the day was to go to the Whalers Way South of Port Lincoln.  It is the red line in this snip from Google Earth.

We called in to the Port Lincoln Visitors Centre and picked up the key to the Reserve, paying our $30 entrance fee.  All excellent, unlike the street signs in Port Lincoln, which were non existent for the major roads I was looking for.  However, we didn't get lost and soon passed Lincoln National Park: I'm sure Its a lovely place, but canophobic as are most places in which a State Conservation mob are involved.

We stopped by a historic marker to where Flinders found water.

This sign is at the entrance to the Whalers Way Reserve.

Dogs are allowed on leads!!  I suspect their public liability insurance premiums (or their lawyers fees) are quite high: the gate is about 30 km from Port Lincoln and the Reserve is full of cliffs accessed by a reasonably rough road.  This is not to grizzle but to suggest the Parks Services could learn a lot from this.  Our route is very visible as the dirt road in this image.

Here is the first Inlet, Whalechasers Chasm.  It should be noted that the wind was extremely strong, adding to the range of things that could go wrong (but didn't).

I think I have mentioned cliffs.

There were also flowers available.  This Melaleuca sp. was flowering in profusion throughout the Reserve.  It was attracting a lot of New Holland Honeyeaters and in one area a flock of Dusky Woodswallows. (presumably feeding on the insects that were feeding on the flowers).

I have no idea what this is, other than a white flower.

A Correa sp.

All vegetation here is quite low which on thinking about it is to be expected on a limestone area exposed to the Southern Ocean (next land going South is Antarctica) and prevailing winds that have possibly not been interrupted since:

• Port Elizabeth (South Africa) if coming straight West - Google Earth suggests 10,000km; or
• Southern Argentina with a small amount of South in the breeze - add another 7,000km.

A flowering eucalypt ...

.. with interesting seed capsules.

Another eucalypt ...

.. which has dropped the flower caps on the ground.

A colony of fur seals (really sea lions) were stacking some zeds at the mouth of a cave.  Even knowing they were likely to be there the distance was quite a lot - both vertically and horizontally.

The cave is at the centre bottom of the island in this image.  Presumably there was some sort of fault which has allowed the sea to cut that channel.

Emus were available.  This image also gives an idea of the height of the vegetation.

More cliffs!

It was suggested that the pool at the bottom of this slope was a possibility for swimming (presumably in Summer).

I think this swimming is contraindicated by this sign.  There were quite  few signs about beware of freak waves in this area.  In WA they are a little more direct: King Waves Kill!

As we drove out a good flock (at least 27 birds) of Cape Barren Geese were seen grazing.

As we got close to our house (having dropped the key off at the Visitors Centre) we found 4 more geese sharing grazing with part of a huge flock of Galahs.

After getting back to the house I was going to take photographs of the Cormorants on the island in front of the house but the wind was so strong the telescope would have shaken continually (especially with my phone acting as an aerofoil).  So I had a glass of wine instead.

Back to index page