Days 39 and 40

 

Day 39

It wasn't a great night's sleep. Belle and Baby Belle hopped past our swag several times and along with other noises going on, it just wasn't a very peaceful night. After breakfast, we went on a walk from the campsite that took us up through some rocky bits and then some scrubby bits and then through some tree bits. We ended up at a little beach. Chris had great fun looking around in the the waters trying to find signs of life. He did find some crabs, only little ones, and he did find pippies (good for bait for fishing later!) as well but then he realised that actually most of them were just empty and full of sand. A little bit disappointing. 

Crab and pippie hunting

Anyway after we hung around there for a little bit we made our way back along the walk. Now, I'm always a bit disappointed on these walks that we don't see mobs of kangaroo jumping past and stuff like that. It just always seems a bit dead. But! There we were chatting away about how my sister had made Anzac biscuits and she wasn't going to be sending any to us (she is in the UK and we are of no fixed abode, but still 😉) when suddenly an emu bolted out of the scrub and just ran across the path about 20 metres in front of us! It was amazing! And then to the right of us we could see two other emus with their heads poking out over the top of the bushes like the the long necked dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. We carried on walking and then maybe five minutes later a kangaroo bounded across the path in front of us! Only the one kangaroo but still it was pretty exciting! A bit later on we saw more emus in the bush. Honestly it really made my day that did. It was pretty special there were no other humans around. Awesome Australian animals! 

We got back to camp, had some lunch and then Chris had a sleep, and I read some of my book. Fed and refreshed, we then we hopped in the car and we drove the 20 minutes to Coffin Bay because we realised we needed an extra days a lot of food and, most importantly, wanted to get some bait for fishing. We stopped at a few lookouts on the way back, checking where it might be good to fish. At one place, called Avoid Bay, there was a great big truck stuck in the sand, like, he was STUCK! I think we can all agree now that you want to avoid driving on the sand in that bay! Although we have a winch, we are only in a tiny little Jimny and there was no way that it was going to be able to move that five ton truck! So we had to just give sympathetic smiles and move on but we were pretty sure they were stuck there for the night. We decided that this beach looked quite good for fishing, though, because the other places that they'd suggested on Google were quite difficult to get to where this one was just a bit of a stroll down a concrete driveway straight onto the beach. 

After a delicious dinner prepared by me 🤪 we got the fishing gear ready and headed back to Avoid Bay. A tow truck had arrived and had pulled the stuck truck out, but apparently the way that he pulled that truck out of the sand had damaged one of the rear wheel rims, so all in all a very bad day for that driver. At least he wasn't spending the night on the sand I guess 🤷 I sat on the beach and read my book whilst Chris went and did fishing in the dark. And guess what?! He didn't catch anything. What a surprise 😉

Night fishing

Day 40

We packed up camp and said goodbye to Belle and Baby Belle. Actually, we didn't really see them much after yesterday morning. I think they realised that we weren't going to feed them so they just weren't very interested in us! 

Then we made the drive to our next camp a bit further north on the peninsular. We stopped off at a place called Talia Caves where I didn't get a picture of the cave itself only the below. I don't quite understand my logic when taking photos sometimes but there we go. It was some very dramatic scenery there though and we had a little walk around the headland which was lovely. 

Our next port of call was a place called Murphy's Haystacks, which were, drum roll please! Another rock formation because Chris and I do love rocks in case you had not realised by now! And these Murphy's Haystacks sort of looked like the Remarkable Rocks on Kangaroo Island. They were really really cool and we spent a good hour there looking at all the rocks and taking photos. (I won't bore you with too many 😉)

We could see grey clouds rolling in the distance in the direction we were heading. We looked on the the weather radar app and sure enough rain was coming exactly where we were to be camping. Bugger!

Our home for the next two nights was called Tractor Beach. Chris had started singing Echo Beach by Martha and the Muffins after he first mentioned where we were staying and I had the song stuck in my head for at least four days. Yes, even as I'm writing this now nearly two weeks later it's back in my head - oh my God!! It was raining as we arrived at Tractor Beach (far away in time) but we really didn't have any choice so we had to set up in the rain. Luckily we had our raincoats this time so that made it a little bit better 😉 But yeah we got very damp, and there were a multitude of mosquitoes around as well and they were having a field day on my calves let me tell you! Whilst we were still damp and it was raining we trudged our way over to the undercover picnic bench area and we cooked dinner very early in the evening. Then we went back to the swag, swapped damp clothes fir dry ones. Played Quiddler fir a couple of hours and that was that was it! Not a terribly pleasant evening, but you gotta take the rough with the smooth I guess...

Yuk.