Thurs 16th –Stokes Beach

After packing up from Harveys we thought we check out another of the walks in the national park book, Ravine de Cassories (this might be spelt wrong…they’re the extinct bird anyway…) it was only 7km return but it was listed as ‘hard’.  We set off in trainers and were soon discussing why it was listed as hard, the ground was really sandy and soft so we both did the rest of the walk in bare feet…. Including the end of the walk which was a sandy river bed with super slimey black mud, squidy toes, mmmm ;-) There were some pretty impressive caves just off the beach at the end of that walk.  We camped at Stokes Beach that night, the beach was accessed trough this rock tunnel, the beach on the campsite side was covered in seaweed but once you’d gone through the tunnel it opened up into a lovely white sandy beach with a little rock pool area and some small surf waves :-) We enjoyed an evening ‘wash’  and some body surfing!  That evening we got chatting to one of the locals who was a super keen surfer, quite entertaining to chat to but Benny and me have come to the same conclusion after listening to stories about bashing sharks on the nose and putting hands under rocks to pull out marron with super sharp pincers…South Aussies are bloody mad!!!  The mossies were out in force that night and cos we were sleeping in the back of the ute I now have 6 bites on my FACE and goodness knows how many on my arms and hands…. Yes Im moaning on the blog cos Benny has had enough of me moaning to him ;)

The caves at the end of the 'hard' hike

Proving that the flash does go off and the camera does work in the dark when it has something (gorgeous !! haha) to focus on ;)

The entry to the cave

The muddy river bed walk

Benny prints...

Quick Sand?? He did have a log near by so he could pull himself out 'Bear Ghrylls' style ;)

Local Resident at Stokes Bay

Pelican at sunset

Stokes Beach through through the rocks

Benny taking a 'nice' photo of me and demonstrating his dislike of having a camera pointed at him.... secretly he's an aspiring model ;) x

Wed 15th – Harverys Return

Not quite sure who Harvery was or where he returned from but the signs said that they used to load seal fur skins onto the boats from the shore near this campsite.  We camped at the top and had to hike down to a criss-cross path to get to the beach, where we passed 2 chicks, we asked how far to go and the thinner one said brightly, “oh, only about 200m” as we kept going her friend, a few metres behind her and slightly larger puffed out “you’re lying Sarah, its more like a km!!!”….maybe you had to be there but I found it amusing that the fat one thought it was a lot further than her thinner friend!!! Anyway it was down some pretty steep rocks but an ok beach, no fish though :-( While we were there it was clouded over and the solar panel was struggling to keep the fridge going so we also did a ‘pointless’ drive to try and find some 4x4 tracks (and failed) and recharge the battery

Mums Birthday present... a sneaky preview ;)

better than a paper towel ;)

Harveys Return

Moet on the rocks ;)

Tues 14th – Valentines Day… I caught you a Marron…

Benny set his alarm for 5:30 and was up and away by about 6ish Im guessing… I was still snoozing.  I was up by 8 and after doing the dishes etc, making some food to take down to the beach and a coffee for Benny (it was Valentines Day after all) I set off too, in trainers this time cos my feet were hurting from yesterday.   When I got there Benny had caught another blue throated wrass and a decent sized herring (the ones in south oz are pathetic compared to WA!).  We set off back up the river bed a little way to check out Bennys marron trap (I just asked Benny how to spell Marron and he said “Yeah that’s right…Or mazza, or fresh water crayfish if you wanna be posh!”)  So yeah he’d spent last night making a marron trap out of bits of wood, sting, cable ties, wire and spare bits of mossie net!!  The trap was empty but on the beach he’d also made a snare… out of the gidgy (hand spear) a zip tie and some fishing line… When he managed to catch one I was super excited and his official cheer-leader, I didn’t think he was gonna, WHOO-HOOO :-) He reluctantly said I could share them with him cos I was giving him shit yesterday about how much he was talking about catching one, I think the saving grace was the fact I reminded him it was Valentines Day ;) So marron and blue wrass wrass for lunch, yummm!!!!  Packed up and moved on to check out the lighthouse at Cape Borda, a square one… and set up camp at Harveys Return :-)

 The track down to Snake Lagoon Beach

The home-made marron snare

Got one!!! WHOO HOO :)

The biggest 

All lined up :)

Mon 13th – KI National Park Attractions

After a quick stop at the visitor centre to dump rubbish and have showers we checked out the Admirals Arch and the sea lion colony that lived around and under it, Feb is the best time cos there are heaps of new seal pups!  We also had a look at ‘Remarkable Rocks’…I just asked Benny if he’d like to say anything about the rocks and his response “it was shit”… he was annoyed cos there were ‘don’t go past this point’ signs that stopped him from walking down to the beach to fish! I quite liked them though, very weathered…  We booked in for a night to camp at Snake Lagoon.  As the walk was “only” 4km return we set off at about 6:30pm for a quite stroll, it was quite rocky, we were both in bare feet and there were some pretty steep bits but it was a good walk.  You walked through some bush and then ended up at a river bed, full of rocks, we merged off the track and rock-hopped down to the beach… Benny hadn’t brought his fishing rods as he wanted to check it out first but I’d brought the kite so we had a quick go with that.  Lamb and mash for dinner, yum… with the fatty bits and left over used for bait tomorrow…

Admirals Arch.... maybe you can see the seals playing?

The remarkable "shit" rocks...

The "do not go past this line"...

I liked the rocks :) 

Snake Lagoon Beach all to ourselves :)

Benny exploring good fishing spots for tomorrow and me playing poser ;)

Lets go fly a kite :)

Can you tell who wants to have the photo taken the most ;) xx

Sat 11th – Sun 12th – West Bay

Benny is continuing to dictate to me, after I told him where we ended up… “At west bay we hung out with a dude of a possum, caught fuck all fish, apart from tiny salmon trout and we learnt about blue throated wrass and even caught 2.  They were yummy, even though they were wrass, and wrass stink and they’re shit…  Urm, that’s all J”

I’m going to elaborate about the possum dude, so once again Benny was fishing until it’d had gone dark so I was on my own in the tent just watching a chick flick when I heard a rustling, I thought it was Benny back so I yelled out, no reply, sometimes he’s a bit like that and will reply with “who did you think it was?!” buuut the second time I tried no reply… I stuck my head  out of the tent and attacking the bin was the possum!! I’ve never seen a possum in the wild before so I wasn’t quite sure what to do, I also didn’t have my torch, that was in the cab right near the possum…after been ‘attacked’ by the ‘cute’ roo at Wilpena Pound I wasn’t about to take any chances so I threw one of my thongs at the possum, who completely ignored it and continued with his business, I managed to get my torch out and it claws didn’t look too sharp so I gave it a pat, it was super soft, awwww, it had such an attitude about it!! Hence the dude possum name!  Benny also forgot to mention the goanna that appeared as we were packing up, it tried to get in our tent, good job the fly screen was up… I was trying to get close to take a photo but didn’t want to get too close after Benny told me that when they get scared and have no cover they run up you with their claws cos they think you’re a tree!!

Thinking about becoming a rock licker... any tips Clare Kelly?! ;)

Bennys prime Blue Wrass fishing spot

Arty shot with a rock with weathered holes in it....

The yummy blue throated wrass

Fishing.... again ;)

A much trampled beach

The friendly goanna..... no dude possum photos unfortunately :(

Thurs 9th – Fri 10th – Western River Cove

After a quick explore of Kingscote (it didn’t take too long…) and a re-fuel of one of the tanks we started to check out the northern side of KI, it was raining so a lot of the places didn’t look super appealing..  Ok, Benny is sat next to me and I asked him to dictate to me for a bit of the blogg, here it is “We ended up at Western River cove, which looked quite nice, we spent 2 nights there, caught fuck all fish, except for one, nice big brim, and then we left and….. where did we go after that??!” I laughed… “Where did we go?!!!”

So Western River Cove was a pretty crappy campsite, a bit like a car park but the location was nice, it was on a river, with a bridge that lead onto a beach…. Like Benny said, there was no fish but he did have a couple of goes and we also got the little training kite out that I’d bought in Adelaide, the wind was a bit gusty though.  We also got chatting… well I got chatting cos Benny was still fishing for his brim till late… to a couple from WA and a mate that had flown down to join them for a week, the couple were touring round in the chicks parents caraven from the ‘60’s, pretty good effort! They also had a fire twirling stick so Benny showed them how it was done ;)

Wed 8th – Kangaroo Island

Enjoyed the last night in a comfy huge bed and in the morning packed up and said bye to Basti, who was working from home before flying out to KL.  We stopped off at a shopping outlet centre so I could buy some jogging bottoms, who knew South Oz would be cold, Perth is still having a heat wave!! And also stocked up on food from woolies.  It took about 2 hours or so to get down to the ferry, Benny gets sea sick and as Im such a charming girlfriend I took delight in eating the other half of my tuna subway left overs from lunch in front of him ;)  Once we got to Kangaroo Island (or KI as the locals call it) with no spewing incidents, it was fairly late so we did a brief explore of the east side of the island and camped around Dudley at Antechamber Bay.

The local wildlife....Mr.Echidna

Tues 7th – Adelaide

After a night in a HUGE bed (Queen? King? It was massive!!) with memory foam type pillows, luxury!! We explored Adelaide a bit, checking out the Botanical Gardens and some of the shops J  Benny got some double takes with bare feet in the city ;)  We struggled to find parking at some spots, we did try and fit into an underground car park and I even asked a guy passing by if we’d fit under the height limit with all the stuff on top of the canopy and he assured us that we would…until we heard the CRUNNCH!! Hahaha J  We checked out Glenelg, a bought a smaller kite (2.6m cos my big one had to go home to Perth with Bennys parents as it was taking up too much space) this one is tiny and should be heaps of fun, no harness needed!  And we had some fish and chips on the beach, I fed the seagulls and Benny called me a kid :p   Stocked up on meat and vacuumed sealed them back at the Lipps.  Enjoyed another night in the comforts of a home J Thanks so much for having us guys xx

Botanic Gardens

Seaguls at Gleneg trying to steal my chips!!

Cheeky buggers ;) 

Mon 6th – Barossa Valley and Adelaide

After driving through the night for a bit, we pulled up at Burra Creek Gorge Campground for the night J  In the morning we did try and check out the Gorge but didn’t get too far into the trek, we’d had another sleep-in and wanted to get on the road to Adelaide, I’d been in touch with some family friends, that Mum and Dad had made when they were living in QLD, so we wanted to make it to them for the evening….. not until we’d gone via the Barossa Valley though! As Benny isn’t  fan of wine I got to sample all the ‘local products’ with the added bonus of a driver ;)  I didn’t recognise any of the names of the wines (apart from Jacobs Creek, boring) and my wine guru (Shannon Fenny!) wasn’t picking up the phone so I just picked random ones from the map… so by accident I checked out “Charles Molten” a discovered it was a boutique cellar door with their cheapest bottle being $35 and I was getting to taste several $60 bottles, yum!!!  While I was in there their were quite a few customers dropping some fairly large amounts of cash… one of them, an American, got into conversation with me and told me “I’m from NY but am living in Miami”… my response was “Im from the Uk but am living on the road..” I don’t think he quite knew how to handle that ;)  After buying some favourites for the Lipps (the friends we were staying with in Adelaide) we kept going to the city.  It was lovely to catch up with Sebastian, Lani and their little girl Eleni and it was so nice of them to welcome us in their home is such a loving way J  Benny and Basti have the same sense of humour and so got on like a house on fire, that and the fact they both had someone else to talk ‘cars’ with… I think me and Lani are the same, we can talk colours and that’s about it!!!

 Burra Creek Gorge Butterflies

Country Road Signs

Sat 4th – Sun 5th – Flinders Ranges and Wilpena Pound

Fueled up in Port Augusta, we’d been warned not to stop too long there… and kept going up to the Flinders, stopped on the way to check out some aboriginal cave paintings…we didn’t realise how long the walk was from the car park and it was a 37 day but we made it and Benny enjoyed a beer when we got back to the car ;)  Kept going and got to Mena Mora Station…. That offers accommodation and 4WD tracks, it was too late to start a track but as a treat we’d booked into one of their rooms with air con…very old air con but it did the trick, that was until early morning when the power went out!!  Also enjoyed a shower, the first real one for just under 2 weeks!!!!  In the morning we bought a map for the 4WD and a key for the gates and set off… I’m balming this partly on Benny cos he bought the map as I was packing up so didn’t ask questions about scale etc (theres a photo of the map below….) So we set off and I was the “navigator”… how I was meant to navigate with a squiqly line and some numbers on it I have NO idea so, yes, we got lost and ended up making up where we thought the start of the track should be, we did end up on a 4WD track that took us along a fence line and was pretty steep, as some points I did forget to breathe!  We figured this was not the right track as there were no locked gates for a start… we made it back to the main ‘road’ and started again, this time Benny drove a bit slower and we both looked a bit harded and managed to find the real track J It was fun, not as steep as the one we’d found but the numbers on the map were ‘points of interest’ along the way so we learnt something…

After the 4WD adventures we took the key back to the station and explored the Flinders Ranges National Park, checking out some of the gorges and history… I wanted to camp at Wilpena Pound cos my Mum and Dad had done the same thing 30years ago!! After we checked in at reception the receptionist kindly said “feel free to make use of the pool” My eyes lit up (it was another HOT day) and said “theres a pool??!!!” I was straight in and it did the trick of cooling me off J Benny just dipped his feet in, the wuss ;)  Back at camp we did dinner and Benny evesdropped on the drama… a sweedish tourist knocking on the Rangers cabin door yelling “theres a kangaroo and its eating all our food, I’ve pushed him but he’s not moving, you’re supposed to get rid of them!!” we thought this was hilarious….until one of them came near us, they’re pretty viscous!! I was on the phone to home and Dad was telling me to tickle it under its chin, which resulted in a scratched arm, and Mum was telling me to move away cos they use their arms to split the front of your body open!!! Wish I’d listened to Mum first ;)

That night was strange temperature, it was boiling when we went to bed, so hot I had to get up and just try and find some breeze to cool down and then at about 4am the wind picked up and was icy, it was freezing!!  After a sleep-in we grabbed some hiking maps and set off up the highest/steepest peak to see Wilpena Pound from the top…. It was pretty hard work!!!  Benny wore shoes on the way up (cos he had something in his toe he couldn’t get out) messed around with the tweezers at the top, got the spike out and so came all the way back down (very rocky terrain!) with bare feet!!  Enjoyed a shower and kept going…

Aboriginal Cave Art

The access to the cave art.... of course Benny choses not to use it ;)

Flinders Ranges

The squiggly lined "map"

Lots and lots of Roos

Stuck..

Fixing the problem

:)

Chip stealer!! I wasnt about to argue

Looking for something else to steal

Climbing up to see Wilpena Pound

Made it to the top!!

The view

Chilling out at the top / Catching his breath ;)