Day 27
Gather Round day! We packed up and drove back into Adelaide. I dropped Chris off where he was meeting a couple of Eagles supporters he knew to go watch the game.
I wandered around a shopping centre for a bit, then headed into Adelaide itself for some lunch. I whiled away the afternoon looking in shops, getting some groceries and having a hot chocolate. It wasn't the nicest of days - bit cold, bit rainy - so my entertainment options were a bit limited.
After the Eagles losing (unsurprisingly 😉) their game, I met Chris and his two friends at a pub then we drove to Pink Gum Campground in Onkaparinga River National Park where we were staying for two nights. It was pretty much dark when we got there, and rather cold as it's up in the hills. We had sausages in bread for dinner and that was that day done.
Day 28
After a lazy-ish start, we drive to Hahndorf, a very cute little German town. The maple trees were changing colour, so the main street was awash with pinks, oranges and reds. It was very lovely and there were lots of people around, which felt a bit weird, as pretty much everywhere we'd been so far was a bit devoid of people. I guess lots of people had stayed for a few days after Gather Round, and Hahndorf is a very touristy place. We had lots of fun spotting other Eagles supporters in their blue and yellow.
We had lunch at The Haus, which had been recommended to us by one of Chris' friends. The portions were HUGE and I actually felt far too full for far too long afterwards!
 |
| Chris enjoying some gluhwein |
After strolling the town and doing some window shopping, we hopped back into the car and went on the hunt for water and firewood. After the previous evening, we definitely wanted a fire! Collecting firewood in the national park was prohibited, and we thought we were bound to see some house on the way back with bags of firewood for sale. We had a bit of a wild goose chase with the water, with one of the spots on Chris' app ending up not being drinking water, so we drove even more than we needed to and saw no firewood for sale! Two places where we could buy horse manure, but no firewood 🙄 We ended up finding some at a little general store though, phew! It was nice to have a fire and be a bit warmer than last night.
Day 29
Sometime during the night, it started raining, and then it did not stop raining. We had left pretty much everything out, so everything was soaking. We probably spent 2 hours sheltering in the swag before admitting defeat and having to pack everything up wet. It was very miserable.
 |
| I'm not sure this photos shows just how wet it was... |
 |
| Chris doing a stellar job with the swag |
We drove north, and as we got more north, the nicer the weather became! It was like the morning had never happened! It ended up being a bit of a chore day. We first stopped somewhere to buy roll up waterproof coats 😉 We then went to a launderette and did a bunch of washing and drying. Chris had been complaining of a "mouse smell" for a couple of days. I couldn't really smell it, but did occasionally get a waft of smelly feet, which Chris said was the mouse smell. I think that he was a bit paranoid that a mouse or mice had got into the car when we back at Mallala. At the launderette, I got a lot of wafts of the smell. Pretty much every time Chris and I crouched down at the machine, there it was. Chris emptied out our clothes tub, but there was no mouse in there. We were flummoxed. Sitting on plastic chairs, watching our washing, Chris put his foot on top of his knee, and there was the smell again! I sniffed his flip flop and there was the culprit! They have fabric straps and as he's been wearing them every day AND were still wet from the morning, they had gotten really pongy! Next stop was a shoe shop to get him some rubber flip flops 😂
Then we drive to our next camp at Parham, a little town next to the water. We unpacked everything and hung it all out to dry. Thankfully there was a fairly decent wind, so the swag and sleeping bag (lesson learnt for next time to not leave the sleeping bag in when the swag is wet as it soaks through) were dry by bedtime.
A lady arrived just after us and spent probably an hour setting up a tent, a tarp and a little fenced area for her two dogs. It was a lot of effort! Her two dogs, pugs, I think, would bark at anyone walking past. She would yell "eeee-nuff! Quiet!" every time, but the dogs always got the last bark in. "Johnny! Quiet! Dolly! Eeeee-nuff!" It was a bit much. It did remind me of a dog called Buck who lived next door to us when we first moved to Brisbane. The neighbours were a bit bogan and would yell at Buck all the time, but it always sounded like they were swearing 😂 He was a really big dog but would howl so softly when he heard emergency services sirens going past - it was adorable!
Day 30
Chris had quite a lot of computer work to do, so it was a (much needed for me) pretty lazy day. Did I mean to catch up on the blog whilst Chris was working ? Absolutely! Did I? No. (Which is partly why I'm two weeks behind now...) I did do a bit of housekeeping in the Jimny though, and I did read a whole book too, so it felt very restorative, well, amongst the shouts of "Johnny! I said eeeee-nuff!"
We did go for a walk out to the beach, which I didn't take photos of. The tide went a loooong way out, and we had to walk over a huge amount of seaweed to get to the watery bit. We didn't see much sealife, as has been the case for the south coast, really. It's that algal bloom.
|
Day 31
Chris had an urgent request from work, so he had yet more computer work to do. I was like "I'll just pack up what I can without Chris and then write the blog," but it turns out packing away by oneself takes a hell of a lot longer than with two people, so I had just got to the end of what I could do by myself when Chris came back, having finished his work. The best laid plans and all that...
We drove to our next camp-site which was in Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park, right down the bottom of the Yorke Peninsular. We made a stop at a place called Foul Bay, and if this is foul, I don't know what the early explorers were on about...
This is the sign we've been seeing everywhere about the algal bloom:
...and seeing so much of that seaweed, I wondered if the two were connected. After a little google, I found out that yes, they were. So, essentially, this algal blooming event has been happening in SA since March 2025. It's been a "perfect storm" of conditions for this to hapoen: first, a large amount of nutrients were flushed into the sea from flood waters in the Murray River in 2022-23. Second, during the summer 2023-24, a major upwelling event transported additional nutrients to the surface and pushed them towards the coast. Third, a marine heatwave that began in September 2024 elevated water temperatures to approximately 2.5°C above average. The algae is toxic to marine life, and the more fish and other sealife that die, creates more food for the algae. The extra nutrients from the decaying marine life also gives more nutrients for the seaweed, so there is more seaweed too. If you want to read more about the bloom, this is a great website: https://www.algalbloom.sa.gov.au/
We rocked up to our site late afternoon and the park rangers came over to chat to us and warn us of a few things in the park. They mentioned that there's a dad emu with five young walking around. I was like "dad?" And yeah, apparently, female emus lay the eggs, then they bugger off, and the dad looks after the young. I had no idea!
After some dinner, we went to a nearby jetty to try our hand at fishing for squid, or, as it shall be called from here on in, squidding. Chris thought we had to wait until we got to WA to do some squidding, but then read that this part of the world is great for a bit of squidding! The jetty in question, Stenhouse Bay Jetty, had no lights on it, and it was very creepy. To me at least. Chris didn't seem fazed. I think the combination of the dark sky and then the dark waters below is what did it. I felt rather uneasy.
Chris was on the other side of the jetty and said to me "I keep thinking I see bioluminescence when I throw the jig in but it must just be the stars reflecting on the water." I was like "it's the stars!" as I was not looking down into the water if I could help it! I then went to his side and threw my jig in and sure enough it was definitely bioluminescence! We had fun making the water splash and lighting it up. Turns out, the algae is bioluminescent, so that's one fun thing about it, I guess? We didn't catch anything, and as I am writing 10 days in the future, I can now tell you that the algal bloom has sadly very much affected the squid population, so all odds were against us, I think 😔
 |
| This is the jetty we squidded from. In daylight, obviously 😉 |
No comments:
Post a Comment