The Eyre Peninsula - Part 1

March 7-9, 2012

After a few weeks in Western Australia, my Uncle Ben and Aunt Jeanne came back to South Australia to spend one more week with us before heading back to Canada.  We decided to do a road trip along the Eyre Peninsula because we heard that it was fantastic for fishing and had some beautiful scenery. 

Instead of flying all of the way back to Adelaide from work, Ryan and I met Ben and Jeanne in Port Augusta (4 hours north of Adelaide).  They had already picked up the camper van so we continued immediately on to Whyalla.  There we had a great campsite right on the beach, and the next morning we rushed out to buy fishing gear.

Unfortunately I didn't take notes about this trip like I usually do, so I can't remember exactly what we did that day.  I think we tried our hand at fishing in Cowell that afternoon and caught our first fish.  Or that might have been in Arno Bay.

The Arno Bay campsite was right next to a jetty, so we knew we could get a good start on the fishing there.  Jetties are great for catching crab, so that became a priority for us.  Upon arrival at the campsite in Arno Bay we found out that we were just in time for a barbeque!  With our meal ticket we got a bottle of red wine for each couple, steak, sausages, chicken wings, and snapper, along with some great entertainment.  After a delicious meal we went out to try some more fishing. 

We caught a few little fish that we were able to use as bait for our crab nets, but we didn't catch anything we could eat.  The obvious highlight of the night, though, was when Ryan caught a Pt. Jackson Shark!  He pulled it up in our crab net.

The next morning I got up with the sun to try my luck at catching something.  I threw in the crab nets and a rod, but only the nets were a success.  There was an old man out on the jetty when I got there and right after I threw in my nets he asked me if I caught anything.  To my surprise there was already a Blue Swimmer Crab in my net!  After he helped me get it into the bucket I threw the nets back in.  A little while later I pulled up the net to find a sting ray in it!  In my panic I didn't think to take a picture of it, but it got back into the ocean safely after lowering the net. 

Unfortunately this guy was missing a claw.

After our luck ran out on that jetty, we continued our drive through Port Lincoln to Lincoln National Park.  This time, instead of fishing off of a jetty we used our 4 wheel drive to go off the beaten path and try our hand at some shore fishing.  The spot we found was beautiful, but unfortunately we didn't catch any fish.  The only thing I caught was Ryan's hat after it blew away and I had to rescue it.

  

Our resting place for the night was Coffin Bay - famous for its oysters.  By the time we got there we didn't get much of a chance to explore the area, but there were some friendly kangaroos a short ways away from our site, and hundreds of very chatty parrots!