A New Tent! Thurs 8 Nov 2012

After riding away from a Port Augusta cabin on a cool morning, we finally found a tent that suits our motorbiking needs, at Port Pirie. On special too, as luck would have it for $229 which is basically the price of 2 nights in a cabin. We are planning to be back home by 7th December, so we need a tent that will get us through to this time. The patched up old tent that was brand new in February this year just wasn't going to last that long.

We stopped off at Snowtown for an early lunch. This poor little old town has reluctantly become notorious for the "Bodies in the Barrels Bank Vault Murders", and so of course we saw the bank building that now has no signage, as the townsfolk are trying not to make a fuss of this. Most of the horrible murders happened away from Snowtown, but 8 bodies were stored in barrels in the local disused bank vault in 1999. Dave and I saw the movie Snowtown, which was sensitively but realistically done, showing how evil could happen in a small community with a charismatic psychopath coming along at the "right" moment to play with the minds of welfare people. The sad thing for the people of Snowtown is that all but one of the murders happened in Adelaide's northern suburbs two hours away.

After our ghoulish Snowtown visit, we rode on to the Yorke Peninsula, which is a long skinny bit looking like Italy. Not far from Adelaide; which is across the Gulf St Vincent. We have been seeing reviews of this part of South Australia in tourist brochures, and before we head off across the Nullarbor we have to explore this part of Australia.

We had planned to stay at Ardrossan, but the caravan park only had powered camping sites on gravel. The unpowered tent sites are on grass, but we are civilised people who like to have power for our light, computer and any other things like kettle and phone chargers. So we continued riding further south to Port Vincent on the coast of Gulf St Vincent, which has a lovely modern caravan park on the beach front. A brand new camp kitchen and dining area and lovely new shower facilities make this an excellent place to stay. When we both rode into the grounds, we noted many eyes watching us. Lots of caravans from Adelaide come here, and everyone is very friendly, wanting to know more about us. Such is the attraction of shiny motorbikes!

We set up our brand new tent and found it to be almost identical to the old one, even though a different brand. Slightly narrower but a tiny bit longer. But the old one had many nifty little features that we now miss, like vents that can be zipped open from the inside, and a bit more storage space. And we don't like the higher step-out bit to exit our tent; the inner floor is up higher than the old tent. I tried not to laugh yesterday when Dave stepped out, tripped and landed half on top of the trailer while trying to have a conversation with me and some other campers. Lucky he's flexible, like Gumby!

Exploring Port Vincent: Friday 9 November 2012

The weather was still lovely and cool, perfect for exploring the local Port Vincent walking trails. Today we saw views of coastline with grain fields coming within metres of the coast. One place took my breath away as soon as we started walking down to a secluded little bay. It had such a vibe to it, a feeling of Aborigines once being in this place. And then down by the shoreline it felt so sad, like a female wanted to cross the waters to get away away from this place, but she had to turn back and go up to the farmland that led up to the top of this little bay. Everything had changed so much! All gone now! And then a sad sad Irish keening song was what I felt around me. Ok…maybe I'm coming across as mad, but my gut feelings in places that sometimes happens often turns out to be based on some history that I uncover later on.

The Narungga people are the Indigenous group who used to live on the Yorke Peninsula area, in small groups. History says there were 500 living across the whole peninsula in small family groupings, but illnesses after white contact took the population down to 100, who were then forced to a mission at Point Pearce on the western coastline where Christians tried to break up their cultural practices and beliefs. Fortunately this cultural genocide attempt did not fully work and I am relieved to see that some Narungga descendants are now working on having the Yorke Peninsula listed as a World Heritage Area, with cultural sensitivity adding respect to the land.

In the late afternoon we went for another hike, this time to the brand new Port Vincent Marina, which is being described in tourist brochures as a "mecca for yachties", but we haven't seen many yachts. Probably because the marina is so new, and there are big fancy rich peoples' homes being built in the marina area. In the future this place will probably be an expensive resort, with yachties sailing across the Gulf from Adelaide.

We saw some glacial boulders on the sea shore here, and an old Aboriginal well area that was taken over by white farmers in the mid-1800s. Another area of strong Indigenous feeling in the cliff faces near this old well. Water was a precious resource and this would have been a very important and secret place till farmers came along and ran it dry.

Exploring the Land of the Closed Museums! Saturday 10 November 2012

All the tourist brochures we have gathered about the Yorke Peninsula rave on about wonderful museums and other places of interest…we have been so looking forward to this place.

So, this morning we set off to go to some local seaside markets at Stansbury, a tiny town south of Port Vincent. It was blowing a gale there and all the poor stall holders were having a hard time with it.

Then we rode down to another tiny town, Edithburgh. Museum only opens on Wednesdays. Everything else seemed to be shut too, apart from a café making great coffee.

So off we rode to the next town, a little place called Minlaton. Again, museum and other galleries closed, but the local tourist information centre was open and a man was very helpful, giving us more brochures which showed that just about every museum on the Yorke Peninsula is only open for a few hours on a Wednesday or if you are lucky, also on a Sunday. We ate a picnic lunch in the main street under a tree, having bought some nice food from the markets in Stansbury earlier in the day.

Back we rode to our new Shangri-La tent, realising now the whole Yorke Peninsula is a farming area for all sorts of grains; barley, wheat, oats, canola. faba beans and peas. This part of South Australia is an important granary for all.

But so many trees have been cut down! Why the pioneers of South Australia had to rip the country bare of trees, causing future times to suffer wind erosion and dust storms in parts, especially the northern section of the Yorke Peninsula and right across the Eyre Peninsula. Couldn't they have left Some tree lines in the farming land? It would have helped the poor country, including all the natural creatures that used to live in it…green corridors, and it would help make the country more attractive for the tourists they are now trying to attract to the region.

Over the next few days Dave and I rode 744kms around the Yorke Peninsula, finding many small towns linked by a network of roads, some with trees having been re-planted to help improve the scenery.

Blown Away at Innes National Park: Sunday 11 November 2012.

The tourist brochures about the Yorke Peninsula do not tell you about the winds! No wonder there were so many shipwrecks along the whole coastline, as the windy weather blows strongly from the Southern Ocean. Dave's dear old Dad warned us about the winds here; you were right Pop! Our tent did well to take on the blasts, and Dave made sure there were extra guy ropes to assist this.

So Sunday morning was blowing strong winds. Never mind, we are the Mighty Intrepids, so off we rode down to the southern tip of the Peninsula, first to Marion Bay, where we nearly got blown off a lookout cliff, then on to the visitor centre at Innes National Park. Where we found that motorcycles get charged the same entry price as cars ($10). This means that a 4WD vehicle carrying 6 people only gets charged $10, whereas 6 motorcyclists on their own bikes get charged $60. The young lady taking the money was very sympathetic to our protests and happily let us leave a written message with our phone numbers to the Powers that made up this discrimination against motorcyclists. And then we went 2-up on one motorcycle to halve the cost for us, leaving my Moto Guzzi resting at the pay centre.

The views of the coastline were awesome, but we were nearly blown off the cliff tops. It was so funny when we tried to make up our ploughman's lunch picnic sandwiches at a picnic table overlooking an awesome bay of islands….Dave held onto the bread bits while I quickly shoved in the food before the blasting wind could blow it away. We had to anchor our picnic plates down with our elbows, and Dave shouted at me over the wind noise that his bread was going dry in the wind. "Stop whingeing!" I shouted back…"it's turning into toast for you!"

Even a lone seagull that came up to us hopefully was staggering on the sand, trying to stay in one place while begging. Any scraps got blown away anyway. After our hastily gobbled down lunch we lurched over to a cliff top to view two more old shipwrecks on the shore. No wonder!

We did come across one place in the national park that had no wind, as it was sheltered. This was the ghost town of Inneston, where there was gypsum mining in the early 1900s through to 1930s. This was an interesting little village, lovely old stone ruins and lots of pesky flies! I used my fly net over my hat, making Dave say I looked like Frankenstein's Bride.

We nearly ran over 2 long skinny silvery coloured venomous snakes on our travels today. One had its head raised in fear, ready to strike?

We stopped for a drink (lemon lime and bitters) at the Howling Dog pub at Corny Point on the west coast, a place of good surfing beaches. A sign here said the British maritime explorer Matthew Flinders in 1802 heard the sound of howling dogs on the shore coming from where he could see camp fires. The Narungga people and their dingoes before "civilisation" came to raze country bare for grain crops and contaminate the few waterholes.

By the time we got back to our campsite in Port Vincent we were stuffed, worn out with the windy day. It was too late to buy food for cooking at the local IGA, so we had a yummy roast meal for $13 each at the very nice pub overlooking gorgeous views of the Gulf St Vincent waters. Another great day at the Retirement Office!

Rock Hound Heaven at Port Victoria: Monday 12 Nov 2012.

Time to explore some more; so today we were off to Port Victoria.

Port Victoria is on the western side of the Yorke Peninsula, facing onto the Spencer Gulf. The winds had dropped today, so it was so much easier for us riding along. We found this beautiful little portside town with old buildings and lovely views of the coast. As we expected, a "Maritime Museum" was closed. But the big attraction for us avid rock hounds was the Geology Trail that tourist brochures told us about. And it was great! It is an area of ancient volcanic activity, with a mix of basalt, epidote and feldspar rocks all along the sea shore. So armed with free brochures from the local kiosk, we set off clambering over the rock shore line, oohing and ahhing over all the different rocks. It was paradise for us. And the waves coming in gently were washing over rocks showing all their colours shine in the cool sunshine. After a couple of hours we realised it was way past our lunchtime and we were hungry, so we headed back to the kiosk along a high cliff pathway. We enjoyed a lovely cheap meal there, interrupted by an elderly lady running into the kiosk complaining of a snake lying across the path outside. Sure enough, there was a long skinny venomous snake, the same sort that we saw yesterday on the roads, and it was nice and relaxed sunning itself in the sunshine. It slithered off into rocks next to the path when it heard our clod-hopping motorbike boots coming to investigate. The kiosk owners cheerfully told us that there were lots of snakes about this season, especially near their shop. "Just stomp your feet on the ground and they go away!" we were told. I'd worry if our younger grandkids were nearby. Their little footsteps wouldn't be heard by a snake till too late and then strike!

We rode home to Port Vincent along more barley and wheat fields, through more little towns that had seen bigger days.

One thing we have noticed at the caravan park in Port Vincent is how friendly the other campers are. Most have caravans from Adelaide, and people are curious to know more about 2 motorcyclists and their travel plans. We have had some great chats and made new friends. Our favourites are two ladies called Jan and Sue who are camping in a tent, travelling from Melbourne, and hearing about how they have been seeing parts of outback Australia by going on some organised eco-tours.

Old Copper Mines at Moonta: Tuesday 13 November 2012

A biting cold wind blew up again today. Never mind, off we rode to the opposite side of the Yorke Peninsula again, this time to the old copper mining town of Moonta. Once again, some of the museum attractions were closed, as well as several antique shops. They want tourists but……?

Dave was hanging out for real Cornish pasties…this used to be a town founded by Cornish people. So we found the little shop that he'd read about in a brochure (it was open, yay!) and enjoyed our pasties for lunch. Then off to a museum that actually was open from 1pm till 4pm. Another Yay! The only one open for us in 6 days on the whole Peninsula. It was a good museum too, full of interesting history about the old copper mines that are now closed, and all the Cornish immigrants who came here. One thing we did notice was how all the timber around was cut down to provide fuel for the mines. Nowadays I would hope modern mines could not do such environmental damage!

We rode home along more roads we hadn't been along before, noting more of the barley and wheat fields. This time there were some good stands of trees along the roadside.

We were planning to stay 7 nights on the Yorke Peninsula but have decided 6 will do, as we have now covered most of it. The tourist brochures that tempted us here describe the Peninsula in glowing terms but they neglect to say that museums and other attractions are only open for a few hours on Wednesdays, and if you are lucky, on a Sunday. But we had a good time exploring anyway. The brochures also don't tell you about the winds!

Tomorrow we are back up to Port Augusta, where we have booked a budget cabin for 2 nights before riding to Streaky Bay on the Eyre Peninsula. Then across the Big Paddock Nullarbor to WA.