We left Nundroo on Saturday 22nd and reached the Ceduna "Fruit Fly Checkpoint" to be told that they were only interested in any thing that came out of the ground, like potatoes or carrots and also citrus fruit. Ruth had already cooked the potatoes, onions etc and we had eaten all of our fruit, so we didn't have to declare anything, but we could have brought in a lettuce (that we gave away at the roadhouse and our Boab tree seed pods that we threw away).
So from there we drove down the coast of the Eyre Peninsula until we reached Streaky Bay where we decided to stay over for church on Sunday and leave on Monday. Streaky Bay is a small coastal village where everyone seems to know everyone, extremely well kept and looked after by the council and locals, with almost everything a small town could want except a Baptist church.
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| Rugged Coast near Streaky Bay, SA |
We took a walk on the Saturday afternoon along the bay, right next to the caravan park, and noticed that quite a few of the sea gulls there only had one leg, see photo - we actually disturbed them in case they had one leg tucked under their wing, but no, they actually hopped away from us as we drew close to them. What was happening? Well further along the beach we came across one gull that was having a hard time walking at all because it had fishing line wrapped around both of its legs, so we assumed that the one legged gulls lost their legs when fishing line caught around their leg, cut off the circulation, the leg died and then fell off. It was quite pitiful to see - this coastal area boasts that it is a great fishing area and is probably their main attraction.
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| One-legged seagulls |
The next day was Sunday and we had the Anglican or Uniting churches from which to choose - we chose the Anglican, and what a good choice it was because it is one of only a few evangelical Anglican churches in South Australia and the message was spot on. I found this out when I spoke to the minister after church and told him that he could have preached that sermon in any Baptist church and no one would have know he was an Anglican. He replied that he would hope that he could preach that sermon in any church and be accepted, but acknowledged that not all S.A. Anglican churches would. He preached from Galatians 3 and it was a full on salvation sermon and even had an invitation at the end for anyone who was serving the church, but hadn't accepted Jesus as Saviour in their lives - even mentioning that baptism didn't get us to Heaven.
We walked back to the caravan park and bought fish 'n chips for lunch and stayed in for the rest of the afternoon as it was cold, drizzly and fairly miserable (and Ruth was getting worse). So first thing Monday we rang the local doctor and made an appointment for 11:30am, which was too late to carry on with our trip, so we decided to stay another night. After Ruth got her antibiotics and a nasal spray, we had lunch and did a short drive around the coast and saw some of its ruggedness and missed out again on seeing some blow holes blowing because the sea was quite calm and maybe the tide not high enough.
We left Streaky Bay on the Tuesday and continued south for about 40 kms until we came across Murphy's Haystacks which are some very unusually shaped granite rocks on top of a hill and from a distance they could possible be mistaken for haystacks - see story in photos. We spent a good hour there walking amongst them - at the entrance they ask for $2 per person to be put in a metal honour box - it's on private property and the toilet and pathways have been provided by the property owner, so we thought that was fair.
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| Murphy's Haystacks |
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| Close up of main outcropping of Murphy's Haystacks. |
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| Explanation for Murphy's Haystacks |
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| Ruth on windswept side of one of Murphy's Haystacks |
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| Just kicked the top off a small haystack. |
We then drove on to a place called Elliston where we turned east and headed for a small village called Lock, where we stayed the night as the only guests in the local caravan park. We had thought of continuing south to Port Lincoln but by this time we figured we had seen enough rugged coastlines and the main attraction all along there seemed to be fishing, so we gave that a miss. At Lock we met a lady in the caravan park bringing in her washing and the utility she was driving had written on its side - Truck Evangelism - so we got talking and it turned out that she and her husband were visiting the local Free Presbyterian Church there where they had their fifth-wheeler caravan parked that they used to visit truckie stops (off the tourism routes) to bring the Gospel to the truckies there by offering a coffee and chat - her husband is an ex-truckie, so he obviously has an advantage with their language and interests etc. We thought it was a great evangelistic service that they did without any denominational support, so we gave her an offering which she said would enable them to give out more coffee.
From Lock we drove north to Kyancutta and there turned east for Kimba (which claimed to be the half way mark across Australia) and where they have a Big Galah.
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| The Big Galah |
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| Kimba - halfway across Australia |
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| The Story of Kimba. |
All of the Eyre Peninsula seems to have a foundation of karst (limestone) and the fields and paddocks all have white rocks and stones over them, but some that are being used to grow wheat have been cleaned up and have large piles of rocks every so often that they must plow and harvest around whereas some of the more industrious farmers have built rockwall fences with the stones and they look quite neat and reminded us a lot of the English countryside where they have stone walls dividing their fields (many that have been made over hundreds of years, unlike those here on the Eyre Peninsular that look a bright white with no aging showing at all). We left the Eyre Peninsula via Port Augusta - saw much mining going on and a huge mountain of iron ore at Iron Knob - bypassed the Yorke Peninsula and headed for Adelaide and over-nighted at Port Germein Caravan Park.
