Just Keep on travelling: Yorke Peninsula

Wilmington

We were pleased to welcome Monday morning knowing that the working week had commenced so this meant that the local service station would be open - we made it to fuel up with just four litres left in the tank. We were certainly pleased that we had decided to stop in Wilmington and not venture any futher.

Wilmington Heritage Trail

The road from Wilmington to the Yorke Peninsula took us through Hollocks Pass which was no big deal with a good road but must have certainly been an adventure for early settlers. We made Port Broughton our first stop. This is a small seaside village with a lovely foreshore. We had a wander along the foreshore and to the village shops before having lunch. Caravans and campervans lined the foreshore and we certainly didn't feel out of place with the age of the other travellers! School is back and all the retireds are wandering the roads. It is good to be back travelling through some interesting landscape. The Yorke Peninsula is a large grain growing area and we understand that the majority of the barley used in the production of beer in Australia is grown in this area.

National Bank as shown on Heritage Trail display

We continued on as we had chosen to stay on the coast at "The Gap" which is about 15 kilometres north of Balgowan. This is an isolated west coast beach and we were surprised to find five other groups already camping there when we arrived. We parked the van amongst the sand dunes and settled in. There was a short walk up the dunes to the beach. The area is popular with fishermen and we watched some guys 4wdriving on the sand. We stayed a couple of days and enjoyed the solitude of the area although we were joined by other campers the next day.

Port Broughton

Camping at The Gap, Yorke Peninsula

After two days we decided to head further south on the Peninsula and stay at an east coast village - Stansbury. As we passed through Ardrossan we diverted to the scenic lookout to see the BHP open cast mine for dolomite. There was also a large grain processing factory and wharf. We are staying at a very nice foreshore camping ground and again have joined many other retired campers. We were surprised how many campers were here but soon found out. It is the time of the year when the crabs are swimming! Lots of South Australian retireds come to the Yorke Peninsula to collect blue swimmer crabs - there is a limit of forty per person per day. The place is a hive of activity around low tide time when the crabs are collected, then they cook them up in big pots and spend the rest of the day shelling and eating them. We were soon given a bag of crabs to try and they were quite tasty. However catching crabs is not something we wish to do.

The crab collectors

The blue swimmer crabs after they have been cooked

Sorting out the shell from the meat

Yorke Peninsula is shaped like a foot (a bit like Italy) and at the very base of the Peninsula is the Innes National Park. On Thursday we followed the coast as much as we could down to the National Park. We stopped off at various bays on the way including Wool Bay where there is an old lime kiln. The whole of the peninsula seems very popular with holidaymakers and there were camping grounds and holiday homes lining the coast.

We eventually got to Innes National Park just after lunch - there is a 25 km road through the park with tracks and roads into the various bays. We stopped off at most of them and also walked into the Inneston historic village. This village was a lively small town until the beginning of the Great Depression in 1930. The majority of the buildings are now just ruins but there are a group of volunteers who have commenced renovating some of the buildings back to their original condition. There are two lighthouses on points of the cape and we walked out to the Cape Spencer Lighthouse and could see West Cape Lighthouse from another point but the day was getting late so we didn't walk out to it.

The weather has been much cooler over the last week and today we had a few short showers. We are not used to temperatures of around 20 deg. We will pack up here tomorrow (Saturday) and commence the trip of 320 kms back to Port Augusta ready to have the car serviced on Monday and leave the caravan in storage there on Tuesday.