It was time to have another check of the car & Karavan to make sure everything was still OK with them both.  I crawled under the car to check the rear suspension, rear transfer case, drive shaft, hydraulic springs, parking brake, brakes, rims, etc & found the front chassis bracket for the rear transfer case had broken.  This is what has been making the occasional clunking noise I have been hearing where it has been banging on the exhaust brackets, exhaust pipes & the broken bracket.  I sat & had a coffee & cheese while thinking about what to do with it.  I decided to strap it up with some webbing strap tie downs that I have been carrying as the transfer case pushed easily back up into position.  Doing all this took the best part of the morning as I wasn’t happy with my first attempt.  While Ron was having his fun under the car I didn’t want to miss out so I did our washing in a real washing machine in the community laundry.  This place has absolutely lovely new facilities, it is a huge beautiful caravan park on prime real estate.  Apparently a poor fisherman bought it for millions & is spending millions to re vamp it.

Lunchtime & we decided to have fish as Port Lincoln prides itself as the seafood capital of Australia. We drove into town next to the harbourside park & looked for a fish café.  The café we chose, Del Giorno’s, has won awards for being the best seafood restaurant in Australia.  We had the famous King George Whiting plus the kingfish & it was delicious, with the extra benefit of the splendid view out over the park & harbour.  We went for a walk out on the town jetty (of course) & chatted to an elderly Italian fisherman for a while, then headed back & looked at the life size bronze statue of the horse Makybe Diva.  This horse, owned by a Port Lincoln tuna fisherman, won the Melbourne Cup three years in succession (2003, 2004 & 2005) & won over $14.5 million in prize money.

We then continued driving around Port Lincoln on the tourist route, driving through the town & getting a good idea of the layout of the town & the types of houses.  Some of the houses are huge & magnificent with great views over Boston Bay (these are the homes of poor fishermen & their descendants). We also drove through the newest section of town, the canal subdivision, the commercial fishing boats lined up here are amazing.  Port Lincoln claims it has the largest fishing fleet in the southern hemisphere, with different boats for the abalone, mussels, oysters, prawns, scalefish, southern bluefin tuna & the southern rock lobster.  Fishing brings millions of dollars into the local economy & Port Lincoln is supposed to have the highest population per capita of millionaires in Australia (poor fishermen, now I know why we are paying such horrendous prices for fish).

We stopped at the lookout at Billy Lights Point & watched a few large fishing boats heading back into port with our caravan park on the other side of the bay as a green backdrop.  Back at the caravan park I waited for the car to cool a bit before checking what effect the 28km trip had on my temporary repair job.  The gap had widened a bit so I will try something a little different in the morning.  Tereza & I then went on a foreshore walk from the bottom of the caravan park & discovered more wildflower types that we had not seen previously.  The other thing we noticed in this region are beautiful fields of freesias (not natives).   The wind was cold & it was starting to get dark so we only went as far as the slipway, with two big fishing boats getting a repair & repaint, before wandering back.

Again, after such a big fish lunch we decided to settle for cheese, bikkies & coffee tonight.  Our standards are slipping now that John & Sue headed off to Lake Eyre.  We heard from John & Sue tonight, they arrived in Marree & had a 2 hour flight over Lake Eyre & Cooper Creek plus the Birdsville Track.  There is so much water out there, roads are flooded, Sue said that it looks as green as New Zealand.  It must be wet.  It is amazing, everywhere we have been to around Australia it is green, usually it’s dry & sand.