More moths ...

We visited the Head of Bight information centre and continued out to the boardwalk and lookout, unfortunately for us all the whales had moved on and headed home.  The caretakers told us it had been a very busy year with lots of whales and over 30 calves born in the area.  The area of the Head of Bight is apparently “the nursery” where the whales come to give birth.  Due to their annual visits many are names and photographed.

In discussing the weather, as you do, they mentioned that yesterday afternoon had been unusually calm before an incredible wind blew up … we could only agree with his observations!

From there we headed to Eucla, the border town on the WA side. It is the only WA location on the Eyre Highway to have a direct view of the Great Australian Bight. In 1873 work commenced on the Albany to Adelaide telegraph line, Eucla was an important station on the line as it converted the American Morse code used in Adelaide while the WA used international Morse code.

Today the telegraph station can still be seen emerging from the sand dunes.

The town was gazetted a township in 1885, reached its peak in the 1920’s having had a jetty and tram line constructed for offloading supplies bought in by ship. By the end of the 1920’s the town had started to decline due to the construction of a new telegraph line alongside the Trans-Australian Railway.

We continued onto Fowlers Bay and found ourselves a very quiet, sheltered site for the evening … just what we needed! Fowlers Bay is just over the WA/SA border about 660kms north-west of Adelaide.

The town site was first mapped in 1627 by Francois Thijssen, Matthew Flinders came along in 1802 and named the bay after his first lieutenant. The area had many pastoral leases, mainly for grazing sheep which like many lease were not successful due to drought. Whaling ships also visited the bay in the 1800’s, the whales were bought onto the beach for processing. It is ironic that whale conservation and whale watching boat operators work out of this small town. For the loading of wool and whale products a jetty was built, the jetty has had a couple of extensions and is now over 350 meters long. A very popular spot for the local fisher folk. In fact, they were wandering around in wet weather gear; multiple rods and buckets and some towing small carts with numbers buckets. Each one we spoke to talked about the squid that they had caught that they would be able to use for catching the giant mulloway nearby. Apparently, the town is known for its prolific squid population.

The town is very small with large, imposing sand dunes at the end of the main street (there are only three streets running parallel to the beach), a dune vegetation project has reduced the pace at which the dunes encroach on the town.

We opened the van to be greeted by four moths from the nights before, I opened the kitchen and was greeted by another 6!  They really seemed to like us as we found more when we opened up the following night in Ceduna.

After Fowlers Bay we went through Penong with its collection of windmills and onto yet another Pink Lake - Lake Macdonnell.

For the last couple of days, we have been enjoying the Gawler Ranges National Park, located at the northern end of the Eyre Peninsula. The weather has been kind to us today ... no wind; 30 degrees and clear skies.

The Gawler Ranges Aboriginal people have inhabited the area for at least 30,000 years, and in 1839 Edward John Eyre named the ranges before he crossed the Nullarbor.  

The Park was previously a large sheep station before being offered for sale to the SA Government. The old shearing shed and shearers quarters as well as an outstation and the original homestead are all in amazing condition with fabulous signage and information. At one point they were shearing 30,000 sheep a season! In a bad season they only had 9,000 to shear!

We are the only ones in the campground and after our drive around the park today (that took most of the day), apart from shooting contractor who visted us to say that he would be spotlight shooting on the otherside of the nearby hill looking for feral cats. The ranger visited us this morning. He thought we might be the only ones in the park alongside an estimated 8,000 feral cats!.

It is a beautiful park, and should we be back down this way sometime we will stay again.

The big question now is ... which way home? North and heat and possible rain (which has ruled out any thoughts of more unsealed roads) but unchartered territory or east and south covering territory we have aleady seen ... stay tuned!