13/5/2012  -  Mothers Day today.  Had our coffee outside and surprise, surprise, the wind had started already.  The girls, including  Zara,  phoned to wish me a happy Mothers Day and I also got a lovely call from Con.   I opened up my e-cards then.  There was one from Pa, Kirmy and Lee Lee which were all beautiful.  So after that lovely start to the day we had our brekkie and went for a walk into town.  By the time we got back the wind was even colder. I collected a jar of shells off the beach behind us and did a couple of loads of washing and put that on the clothes line which the wind decided to blow over anyway. This afternoon I got another lovely e-card which was from Zara. Pa cooked me a lovely yummy roast lamb and veges for tea and we had apple crumble and yoghurt for dessert.  We're moving on again tomorrow - somewhere warmer we hope.

Caravan Park Port Broughton

View from Beach

Our Site at Port Broughton

Beach behind our Site

12/5/2012   -  It was a beautiful morning when we got up.  We had our coffee outside and there wasn't a breath of wind so we were hoping we were in for a lovely day.  Didn't take long for all that to change.  The cold wind came up about 9 o'clock and the clouds rolled in. The day ended up being cloudy and showery.  We spent pretty much of the day in the van but were able to get a stroll around the park in in the afternoon.  We are well and truly over this weather.  It is just too cold and windy down south at this time of the year.

History of Port Broughton

Jetty at Port Broughton

11/5/2012  -  It was a bit overcast here on our first morning in Port Broughton.  As the morning wore on it did clear but was quite windy.  Windier than yesterday.  We had our brekkie and I did a couple of loads of washing.  Then we went for a walk downtown to check out the jetty and shops.  The jetty is really good, nice and long and was only refurbished last year.  It was pretty cold out on the jetty though so we didn't stay out there too long but it looked like it would have potential for fishing as the water gets much deeper at the end of the jetty.  We went on to check out the shops.  There is a small IGA, Bakery, Butcher, a few cafes and a pub.  Not a big shopping area at all but it does have the basics.  We wandered back to camp, had lunch and tried to stay out of the cold wind.  There is a guy fishing out in the water from the van and I bet he has some woollies on under his waders. We've noticed the fishermen here drag a box out in the water with them, usually a polystyrene cold box, which we think they have all their fishing gear in it and then they use it to put any fish they catch into. They have it tied to them and it just floats near them.  Pa was given a bag of "Tommies" (Tommy Ruff) this morning by a man in the park who had an excess so we are going to try them for tea.  We would prefer to smoke them but have to get some sawdust first and can then probably smoke them in the Weber. We'll probably just do them in Lemon Pepper on the grill plate in the Weber tonight, so it will be interesting to see what they taste like.  Hopefully okay.  We'll see!!!

10/5/20

Clydesdale Statue at Maitland

Jetty at Moonta Bay

Port Broughton

  

This morning was beautiful.  The sun was shining and the wind, well what wind!!!!  We got up and started packing up. It was great as we didn't have to race to be out by 10 and we knew we didn't have far to go today so we took our time.  Pa rinsed the car off and reorganised it and while he was doing this I cooked us scrambled eggs.  (I know it doesn't sound too exciting a breakfast for most people but for us with our new diet it was a treat, no bacon mind you)  We finished our packing up, picked up a bit more fishing tackle, fuelled up at $1.51 and had a look at the local market.  It was mostly craft work but I got a few good ideas from it.  We then headed out of Maitland thinking we were so glad we had stayed there.  It is a lovely little town with friendly people.  Our first stop was Moonta on the west coast.  It is a great town, quite big, with lots of lovely old buildings and homes and lots of shops.  The only bad thing about the town was its streets.  They were like a patchwork quilt and so overdue for repair. Port Hughes, just on the coast out from Moonta was a lovely town with lots of new homes, a nice long jetty and a good little caravan park but in bad weather would be very exposed to the elements.  Moonta Bay had a great jetty with a good little caravan park but it was a bit tight.  Next town was Walleroo which is not worth the drive, very dirty and just badly looked after.  North Beach was just out on the coast from Walleroo and it was just all new homes on a marina but obviously there was a water problem as none of the homes had any grass, everything was just dirt.  Even the caravan park sites were all dirt or on bitumen.  We actually got to drive the cruiser and the big girl on the beach here.  We got to the end of a street and had no place else to go so we could see it was nice and firm so away we went.  We had to stop for me to take photos of course.  How good was this.  We are only hoping some of the beaches we have been hearing about in WA are as firm as this and we can camp on some of them.   We had a look at the ferry that goes from Walleroo to the Eyre Peninsula but it was really expensive to use it.  We stocked up the wine cabinet before we left Walleroo because it has been a dry argument for a while so at least the town had something going for it.  We drove on to Port Broughton and booked in at the caravan park.  It is costing us $30 a night and if we stay for 7 nights we only pay for 6.  We have only booked till Sunday night so we will see how we go after that.  We have a good site right beside the beach so we set up camp, had a very late lunch and went for a walk along the beach.  We think if the weather is kind to us tomorrow we may be able to launch the kayaks and go for a little fish.  There is also a good long jetty here.

John Deere Tractor towing an Air Seeder

9/5/2012  -  We woke up to a very foggy morning.  We were hoping that was a good sign that it was going to be a beautiful day.  We have decided to stay another night in Maitland at the Showgrounds.  We want to go fishing today so we rigged our rods up, had breakfast and headed for Port Victoria on the West coast of the Yorke.  When we got there the wind was really strong and the water was rough so we turned around and drove over to the East coast to Port Victor hoping to get out of the wind. On the way we had to get right off the road to make room for a tractor and air seeder.  It took up most of the road. Port Victor was only about 35 klms but when we got there we found that they didn't have a jetty which is where we wanted to fish from today so we headed back north to Port Julia.  Thankfully there was a jetty there so we went fishing even though it was quite windy there too.  Pa caught a baby King George Whiting and I caught a slightly bigger fish that was quite dark and looked like a Whiting but we weren't sure what it was.  We ended up catching 3 squid, 2 for Pa and 1 for me.  As the grubs were gnawing at  us we headed back to camp via Ardrosan.  We got back and all the other vans had left so we were by ourselves tonight.  We cleaned our gear up, had a bite to eat and went and stocked up at the supermarket.  Salt and Pepper Squid and whole Mullet was on the menu for tea.  Also another cold night tonight.  Moving on tomorrow.

Port Minlacowie Camp

Maitland Showground Campground

8/5/2012  -  We had a light shower of rain this morning before we got up so that didn't bode well for the day.   We decided to move on from here with no definite place to stay for tonight.  We left at 9.40 and by then the wind had increased.  Minlaton looked quite nice with lots of shops and the van park looked quite good.  We were punching into a really strong head wind and needed to pull up for the day or we would use too much fuel so our next town was Maitland.  It is only a fairly small town but we ended up staying at the Showgrounds for $15 a night.  We washed the van which was good as it was covered in dust from the dirt roads we had travelled on yesterday and this morning.  Then we went for a walk down town to check it out.  It isn't very big so it didn't take us long but they do have a supermarket, butcher and baker.  We came back to camp, had lunch and did battle with Telstra.

Wool Bay Jetty

Point Turton 

Gravel Bay

Gravel Bay

7/5/2012  -  Wow, what a night.  The wind was really strong just before we went to bed and kept up all night just getting stronger and stronger.  We were woken up during the night with the awning blowing around and the van rocking.  We got up early and did battle getting the awning rolled up.  At least it was a bit quieter with it up.    The Sun was shining but it was too windy and we didn't want to go through another night like that so we had breakfast, packed up and hit the road at about 9.30.  Port Julia was the next town. It was quite small with lots of older houses and a good campground for $6 a night.  Port Vincent was just down the road with quite a few shops and a nice clean caravan park.  Stansbury was just lovely with a great caravan park and the town was nice and clean.  We could spend some time here plus Stansbury is famous for raking crabs when they are in season.  Wool Bay had a lovely jetty and there were old lime kilns on the hill above the jetty. Just outside of town was Port Giles where there was big grain silos and a wharf where they were loading a ship.  Then we passed through Coobowie, Edithburgh that had a great van park and we could spend some time here too.  Fuel was $1.55 and $1.60 for unleaded here.  Sultana Point had a big wind farm and lots of new houses, Yorketown was quite big with all services, Warooka was small and then on to Port Turton.  It had a good van park which was $21 for the night but it was quite a tight little park.  It was right across the road from the jetty so would be close to do some fishing.  We had lunch there.  We kept heading south to Marion Bay but it wasn't very nice and would have gone to Stenhouse Bay but it is in the Innes National Park and we would have had to pay $12 just to drive into the park and then $7 if we wanted to camp.  We didn't know what it would be like so we gave that a miss.  We drove up a corrugated dirt road out to Gym Beach was was nice but it was also National Park.  Gravel Bay was lovely too but Corny Point was just a dirty little town with dirty toilets so it wasn't worth driving to.  Hardwicke Bay had some new homes as well as a row of fishing shacks on the water. There was lots of weed there too.  We needed to pull up for the night so called into Port Minlacowie Rest Area.  Well,  we thought it was the rest area but it was actually down the road at the boat ramp but had a no camping sign up.  Anyway we had a water view for the night and the wind was not blowing which was just great.  We had tea early and went to bed.