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 ;)