THE YORKE PENINSULA

If any of you have not ever been to the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia, let me tell you, you are missing something special. Over all we travelled just about all of it from the east coast, to the south, through the middle and up the west coast. We spent 8 weeks over all exploring this gem of Australia.

As we wrote in our last bulletin, we started at Ardrossan, then moved to Black Point and then to Stansbury. We called at Port Vincent on the way to Stansbury and found this funny sign outside the local IGA. At Stansbury we were able to obtain a great beach site for a month before moving to another site just one row back until January. As most other camp areas we contacted were booked out right throughout the school holidays, we decided to base ourselves there and explore the peninsula from here. Stansbury is a lovely quiet seaside township with the greatest community spirit we have ever come across. All the locals were so friendly and so were the “inmates” of the caravan park! Stansbury is directly across the Gulf of St Vincent from Adelaide. On clear nights we could see the lights of Adelaide (only 65kms across the bay but 200kms around!). Stansbury also received the South Australian Tidy Towns Award whilst we were there and goes into the National Judging in April 2009.

It was here where we really got into “raking” for Blue Swimmer crabs, ate Gar Fish and friends gave us recipes for Salt & Pepper Squid and Chilli Crab! Oysters you could purchase for $7.00 per dozen, so we also ate our share of Kilpatrick, Mornay and some other recipes we came across! We had great neighbours and have made some great friends. Janet & Barry from Adelaide introduced us to eating Gar Fish and Barry taught Rob how to fillet Gar Fish. We had our resident pelicans, seagulls, Crested Terns, Pacific Gulls and even a couple of Flesh Footed Shearwaters. The other residents who were very territorial over their section of the beach front were a family of Magpies. They would even get stuck into the Pelicans and the seagulls if they trespassed!

We had lots of lovely shared dinners, laughs, fishing and walks. This included helping Barry and Janet celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. Another lovely event was Rob’s cousin, Allan Pierson with Megan and the three lovely kids arriving in Stansbury. Al & Megan, like us have been travelling Australia with their Ultimate Camper. They have been on the road for 2 ½ years but are now making their way back to Newcastle to settle back into their old life! We had three days with them were we took them crabbing and they did also a bit of sight seeing on the Peninsula. Last heard they are in Tasmania before heading back to Newcastle for a February start back to school for the kids.

From Stansbury we took many drives to explore the area. Yorketown was 20kms away and had a nice little shopping centre. Here we also took advantage of making dentist appointments to have that check up! It is so hard to get into a dentist when you’re travelling! Stansbury had a good IGA but Yorketown had a more extensive one. Good gourmet butchers were found in all surrounding towns including Stansbury. Minlaton was another lovely town with good bakery, butchers and here I could get our shoes repaired too! All the bakeries around made great Cornish pasties with much of the Peninsula heritage stemming from Cornwall and Cornish miners. The lovely old stone cottages are a feature in all the Peninsula towns and particularly in Edithburgh, about 25 kms from Stansbury going south. Most of the coastal villages have great jetties with much heritage attached to them as shipping was used in the early days to transport wool, lime, copper and barley. There are many huge grain silos as barley is the main crop of the area. They say if you have drunk an Australian beer then your have had the barley from the Peninsula! Port Giles silos were massive and extensive.

The Peninsula is a windy place and they use it to good advantage. The wind farm at Edithburgh was probably the biggest we have come across.

The coastal drive south from Edithburgh took us around some spectacular coastal scenery including the Troubridge Island Lighthouse, built out of red brick! Very distinctive. Another drive took us across the Peninsula (40kms) to Hardwick Bay then south to Corney Point and another lighthouse. We followed a dirt coastal road right down until we reached Innes National Park at Seal Point. From here though there is no direct road through the park so we had to head back inland and drive down to Marion Bay for access to the National Park. You drive through Stenhouse Bay into the park and it is truly beautiful. History shows how difficult it was though for shipping navigation as the coastline is literally littered with shipwrecks.

Another drive took us inland and north through Minlaton, Maitland and onto Moonta. Moonta was the home in the late 1800’s for approximately 15,000 people, mainly Cornish miners to mine one of the world’s richest copper deposits. It is now a nationally listed heritage area and even though it is still rich in copper ore it will be protected and not mined. Moonta Bay, next to Moonta township is one of the prettiest areas. We checked at the caravan park that was right on the bay and they could get us in for 2 nights after we left Stansbury.

Christmas we celebrated quietly, no turkey etc but we purchased a lovely Crayfish from in Inland Sea shop at Warooka. Rob turned this into a gourmet delight with a brandy laced mornay sauce, served with fresh mango and followed up with a brandy custard sponge flan topped with blackberries, strawberries and raspberries! Chased it down with a nice bottle of bubbly. We spent the afternoon being lazy and playing Yahztee! We did partake in a Stansbury tradition though and everyone from the park and the town heads to the pub on Christmas morning. Its happy hour from 9am to 10am and opens until 11am. It was a hoot with everyone wearing Christmas hats etc and being such a friendly down, everyone got Christmas kisses!

New Year saw an invitation to travel to Adelaide and meet up with Jan & Grant Nankervis from Cobar. We spent the night there and gently saw the New Year in. Travelled back to Stansbury the next day as we had to begin packing and dismantling the annex to leave Stansbury and travel to Moonta Bay. At Moonta we rode the Heritage Mining train around the mine absorbing the history, then drove to Wallaroo and checked out the new Marina there. This area of Kadina, Wallaroo and Moonta is known as the Copper Coast. Then our time to leave the Yorke Peninsula had come and the 5th January saw us leave the Yorke Peninsula and head towards Whyalla.

We decided to free camp for four nights before heading into Whyalla and found a perfect spot about 30kms from the town at a place called Fitzgerald Bay. Lovely clear turquoise sea and all to ourselves. We have been snorkelling and caught some more crabs and scallops on which we dined. Tomorrow we head into Whyalla for new experiences.

Until next time,

The Happy Travellers

Rob & Walter