Foggy day in Adelaide

Photo taken in Adelaide city of the Post Office clock. Even the airport is closed to air traffic this morning.

Bashams Whales and Currency Creek Waterfall Walk

This is our last day away. After packing and tidying up the shack, we walked from Horseshoe Bay to Bashams Beach.
















From here we could see that there were whales on the far side of the bay, so we went back and collected the car and drove around to the Bashams Beach lookout. Here you can sort of see that there is a whale bobbing around.

And here's a little bit of fin.

We headed out to Currency Creek after having a cuppa at Middleton. There's a very pleasant walk from the Lions Park at Currency Creek that takes you under the railway viaduct to a small waterfall. It's about 1400m each way.

The waterfall on Currency Creek.

Cockle Train and Goolwa

After grabbing some breakfast, we've made it back to the station in time to catch the Cockle Train. We're going to do the round-trip to Goolwa, then to Victor Harbour then back to Port Elliot.

After arriving at Goolwa we walked up and over the bridge to Hindmarsh Island. Looking back over Goolwa Wharf one can see the paddle steamer Oscar W.

We had some lunch at the Goolwa Bakery after looking in some of the odd shops in the main street, then headed back to the wharf and station to train to Victor.

We grabbed a quick coffee in Victor as we only have about 25 minutes until the train heads back to Goolwa, and this is the last departure for the day, and if we miss it we'll be walking back to Port Elliot.

After getting off the train we walked most the way around to Bashams Beach, where there was another whale. That's the black smudge in the distance.

Deep Creek Conservation Park

Ooops, we're sufficiently late going to breakfast that we're crossing the railway at the same time as the first train to Victor. It's the Brill railcar today pulling some other vintage railstock.

Another fine breakfast at Cockles.

On the way back to the shack we took a walk down to Horseshoe Bay. This is me letting breakky go down.

Today's journey is to Deep Creek Conservation Park. Before leaving, we stopped at the "Roundabout Cafe" to get a picnic lunch. They were a little busy but very slow. Anyhow, the sandwich was satisfactory.

The drive to the park was through some of the same route we took from Yankalilla. There are still quite a few trees and bits of greenery on the roads after the weekend's storms, but nothing to impede our progress.

Based on what I learned from the park's web site, we headed directly for the TapaNapa lookout, for the most spectacular views of the coast. These kangaroos have a very classy outlook, with their own rainbow.

At the end of the road we had a bit of a look around, expecting to find a picnic table or similar; no luck there, so off for a bit of a walk to see where else we can sit to scoff our lunch. It got very cold and very windy, so we headed back to the car, expecting a big downpour; however, the rain missed us while we had our sangers.

The image below is the outlook from the carpark looking in the general direction of Cape Jervis and on to Kangaroo Island (faintly visible in the distance).

Looking east the rugged coastline can be seen. Note kangaroos again!

Gee, you've made a mess on the car. It's supposed to be black.

From the TapaNapa area we headed for the Stringybark campground. This is one of a couple of cheeky robins here to greet us

This was my favourite part of the park; I liked the taller trees and the reduced wind. There's a whole bunch of camp sites here if you're crazy enough to want to stay overnight.

I believe these are very well trained cows, who stand in a very orderly queue when it's milking time.

On the way home we detoured past Waitpinga and Parsons beaches just to have a look. Not a soul to be seen.

Port Elliot, Hindmarsh Falls and Victor Harbor

After a restful night, we got up to a bright sunny morning. Hmmm, what's for breakfast? One of the places we checked out yesterday claimed it did good breakfast, so lets check them out.

This is the view from the dining room of "the shack".

A short walk around the headland gave us a view into the ocean where there are a bunch of seals frolicking in the waves.  You might need to zoom in to see them.

The view around to Victor Harbor. It really is a nice morning.

Heading on, tummies rumbling, again down The Strand brought us onto the main street and "Cockles". We ordered a Cockles Breakfast - 2 eggs, a sausage, rashers of bacon, fried tomatos and two thick slices of wholegrain toast - and a serve of "sugar free" fruitloaf - another two thick slices with real butter - which we shared. Finally, to top that off, excellent coffee, which we had a second cup each.

After waddling back "home" after that breakfast, we got in the car and drove all the way to Boomers Beach (about 1km!), where by sheer luck we sighted a whale.

Another image of the whale. It was being rather dull, just floating for a while, then it disappeared for ages.

While waiting for the whale to show up again, the Cockle train heading into Victor Harbor passed by. The steam locos are "unexpectedly undergoing maintenance" so it consisted of a couple of old red hen railcars and another vintage carriage.

Still waiting for some exciting whale action, it started to rain. I guess the whales don't like the wet, as we didn't see it again after then. However, we got a great rainbow. Karen spent quite some time digging at the beach, but there was no pot'o'gold.

The next spot to visit was Hindmarsh Falls, about 13km out of Victor. We arrived and the rain stopped, so we had a nice walk down to the falls on an easy path. Lots of birdlife here - Adelaide Rosellas, Blue Wrens, Honey Eaters and loads of others I don't know what they're called.

Because of the rain, we had quite a nice flow over the falls.

We headed back to Victor for lunch; nothing especially remarkable about it. Then the weather really broke, and it really poured for a while. We mooched around the shops in the main street, and walked to the hobby shop which was closed. It would be good if their web site mentioned their hours.

Once we'd exhausted the shopping options, we went into the Bavarian Cafe and had afternoon tea, and watched the passer-by's umbrellas get turned inside out.

I've never been to The Bluff, so we followed tourist drive 59 up there, where this photo was taken. Yes it really had gone that dark. This is the view in the opposite direction to Victor Harbor.

Dinner tonight was an elaborate affair - 2 pc grilled fish and a minimum of chips from the Pt Elliot Chicken Shop, eaten in the car, overlooking Boomers Beach, until it was dark.

Ingallalla Falls and Port Elliot

We're taking a short break on the Fleurieu Penisula. We left this morning on a fine day, after the chaotic weather of Friday night / Saturday morning, and Sunday fixing the flashing that had come adrift from the roof.

This house was in the way on the main road south, so we detoured via the Myponga reservoir road into Carrickalinga.

We thought we'd stop here for lunch but there appears to be no shops in this village. So, the original plan was to stop at the Yankalilla bakery, and this was what we reverted to doing. It turned out to be an excellent solution, as even though it was after 2pm there was an excellent selection of pies and cakes. A steak & onion pie with sauce later (and coffee of course), we were ready to venture on to the next stop on the itinerary.

Ingallala falls had been mentioned by Karen's brother Colin a couple of weeks ago as place worthy of a side trip. This is the reason for heading down South Road rather than the alternate route I'd normally take through Strath or Meadows.

As you can see, the 10km on dirt road to the falls was quite worth the effort. It's a very easy stroll from the carpark to the falls, with several picnic spots on the way.

Plugging our destination into the TomTom resulted in it recommending what appeared to be a windy route, perhaps on lots more dirt roads, but it turned out to be absolutely correct, providing a much shorter exit to sealed road than the way into the falls, and a very quiet, easy run into Victor Harbor and onto Port Elliot.

We cased the shops, cafes and restaurants to work out where to go for dinner. The conclusion was we couldn't decide, so we just made our way to "the shack". After importing our chattels and making the bed (and generally cluttering the place), we went for a walk to the beach / cliff top. This is approximately 2 minutes walk from the front gate.

If you zoom in you're see there are some hardy / crazy folk in the water waiting for the perfect wave. I reckon they will be blue and really wrinkly when they finish.

The sun has basically gone, but we got a pretty sky to finish the day.

We continued our stroll up "The Strand", where we came upon the "Hotel Elliot". One look at the menu, and noting Monday is "Steak Night" the descision was made to stop right here and have dinner. A surf & turf for each of us, and a shared apple & rhubarb crumble with custard and ice cream was more than enough. Excellent service and nice meals - I can recommend this place and we'll probably go back another time.

We've brought the telescope with us, whch I've put out on the deck, but by the time I'm organised it has clouded over somewhat, so we'll scrub that from the evenings activities.

Yellow Tailed Black Cockies

Yellow-tailed black cockatoos in the pine trees across the road. Regular visitors as they seem to enjoy the pine cones.

Wooden Boat Festival - Goolwa, South Australia

After another late night (I'm sure it is Daisy that causes them), and a late start too, we headed down to Goolwa. After some idiot trying to reset the road toll counter in his clapped out old Mercedes (no wonder the Victor Harbor Road has such a bad name) we made it in time for lunch, which we had with Colin and Sue on the main street. We got a rather cool and very windy day which caused the cancellation of a couple of the events, but still a nice day. There was lots of music as well as the boats, some of which I could take - The Borderers have improved since I last saw them (a long time ago) and did quite a good show, even if we didn't get an encore, and those I could leave (I won't name the fidlers). In the evening, we had a sail-past of the boats with fairy lights lit, followed later by a fireworks disply. We managed to dodge the rain for most of the main events.

I'm not exactly sure what the helecopter was here for, but apparently there is some relationship with a squadron and a memorial was located immediately across the road from where it was parked.



The paddle steamer PS Marion was making trips all day. With the strong winds it made leaving the dock quite interesting, since the rudder has little control until the boat is actually moving.


Heading down to the bridge looked OK - but rowing back against the wind would have been hard work. They certainly looked the part though.


Another genuine steam-powered vessel, the P.S. William Randell.


This one was a bit flash.


An apparently this one has sailed to Tasmania in the past.

Movie Review - West Side Story

Interesting take on Romeo and Juliet, made in 1961. Considering it was made some 40-odd years ago, I'm surprised I'd never seen it before, at least not in it's entirety, that I can recall.

In summary, it was good, if slow and a bit long - we stopped for an interval half way through, and looked up some details about the actors from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055614/. Its intersting to finally put those songs I've known for years into context (and even into the one film!).

Daisy's Swiss present

Daisy is here for a sleep-over berfore we go to the Wooden boat festival at Goolwa tomorrow. She has finally received her present from Dora and Werner - a beatiful embroidered tea-towel with charming Swiss images. Daisy says that it is too nice to use and she thinks she will frame it.