Day 29 – September 29 2012

Well, we have been on the road for one month now.  This morning we decided to explore part of the south coast by heading to Cape Gantheaume.  Not far along we were stopped by a flock of sheep being herded along a road, with lots of little lambs amongst them.  There was a fair bit of water on both sides of the road, some dams but mostly natural lakes, all brimming with water to overflowing.  One of the lakes right on the road we stopped & observed a pair of swans with a glide of cygnets, totally unconcerned by us being so close.  The dirt road was in mostly good condition, right up until we reached the border of the Cape Gantheaume Conservation Park, where it turned pretty bad with lots of corrugations & pot holes.

We went all the way to the end of the road at Wheaton’s Beach & admired the ruggedness of the coastline & rock formations, with huge waves crashing onto the reefs, a legacy of the very strong winds.  There were also thousands of terns & little terns roosting on the rocks, I’ve never seen so many in one place before.  It was still very windy & cold, around 12C, so we were rugged up a bit.  As we walked along the beach, amongst the masses of seaweed heaped up, I spotted a seal sunning itself.  We walked up to it & took a few photos, it is really quite a large animal, it stretched itself out to survey us, then went back to sunning itself.  This was fairly exciting seeing the seal so close.

We journeyed around to Wrecker’s Beach, this is very sheltered from the prevailing winds & the sea was very flat & calm looking.  This beach was named from the numbers of ships that were wrecked in the area & the salvage of parts from the ships by people that profited from the salvage.  Point Tinline offered a good vantage point to survey the rest of d’Estrees Bay as it stretched right around to Point Reynolds & Pennington Bay.  During winter southern right whales are supposed to calve & nurse the young whales here, but I didn’t see any so they must have already left for Antarctica.  It’s hard to imagine that the next piece of land that you come across from here is Antarctica.

We stopped at Clifford’s Honey Farm on the way back to Kingscote to have a look around, it is only a small place & we bought some “famous” Ligurian bee honey & a honey ice cream (they advertised it as the only place in the world that you can buy this famous ice cream from), the ice cream was so-so. Now that we tried it can be removed from our bucket list.  We were starving so we stopped in town at Kingscote’s famous fish & chip shop – just on the side of a Caltex garage, very unpretentious.  They have fresh fish so they can make it to your own order.  We shared a fisherman’s basket, it was delicious.  While waiting we read the testaments of many very satisfied customers.

Back at camp we had just pulled up & I was standing at the Karavan when someone called out my name.  A sailing friend, Libby, from Canberra had just booked into the caravan park with her Swiss friend.  What a small world we live in. We had afternoon tea with them. To finish the day we went for a quiet walk on the Nepean Bay beach – calm & placid after yesterday.