Eyre Peninsula and a quick drive through SA

We headed around the perimeter of the Eyre Peninsular which forms the eastern end of the Great Australian Bite. It looked like there was a lot of very nice spots but we only stopped at a few. First Cape Labatt which is the home of the largest Sea Lion/Seal colony in Australia (bigger than Kangaroo Island). This was quite something to see, at least 50 of them lazing around on the sand, on the rocks, waddling from one place to the other, mucking around and chasing each other, babies suckling from their mum. We could have spent much longer just watching their antics through our binoculars, however....the kids were getting impatient... It was well worth the trip out and as usual these photos don't seem to portray how impressive it was.

Some rocks called Murphy's Haystacks and breakfast at one of our rough camps........

By this stage the kids are starting to get fairly travel weary Cem and I can feel it. We head down to the bottom of the peninsula to Coffin Bay National Park. More emus here than we have seen all trip (except for the flock of 10 in our first week in western NSW). More beautiful coastline and we realised you don't have to travel all the way to WA to get turquoise ocean.

After all the National Parks and coastline and nature, we enjoyed the 'urbanity' of Port Lincoln, especially our city lights view from the 'Recreation Vehicle approved' free campspot at Billys Lights Boatramp. We really have found some great places to stop for the night.

Port Lincoln is apparently 'the seafood capital of Australia'. We tried our luck again off the main jetty, encouraged and coached a bit by a couple of local highschool kids, all to no avail. We gave up and went and bought a load of fresh seafood from the seafood shop.

Heading back up the east side of the Eyre Peninsula, through Whyalla and Port Augusta. They seem like industrial towns. We didn't see much of them but had a night in Whyalla at the local football club which opens their doors to campers and provides use of their toilets and HOT showers. Ahhh. Of the little we saw in Whyalla, by far the best thing was Faye, the manager of the footy club camping, who, on our departure the next morning presented us with an amazing bag of homemade goodies for the road; Anzac biscuits, coconut ice, rocky road, apricot balls and another slice. Amazing! So incredibly generous and kind of her. And also delicious. Thankyou Faye.

And so we are heading east fairly fast now. The kids have just about had it. We have done a lot of driving over the last week or so, stopping anywhere only one night and so when we came across this most beautiful campspot on the Murray River at Cadell, we all wanted to just stop for a bit and stay for more than one night. So we did just that. A day hanging around the river, watching the bird life, watching vessels pass on the river, very nice. A magnificent spot to camp, thanks to the Cadell community for providing such a facility. They even lit the cliffs up at night for us..

And dinner in the camp oven over the campfire, followed by copious amounts of toasted marshmellows and chocolate..

The kids are longing for home home now, this morning we saw the first 'Sydney' road sign (1035km). Not far at all really, considering what we have already done. In Mildura we managed to lose ourselves for a good hour in the biggest and trickiest maze we have ever done. The Maze, together with some time at the funpark, and also an awesome visit (actually two visits on consecutive days) to the Mildura Aquatic Centre (with WAVE pool!) and then Dominos Pizza for dinner went quite some way in restoring the kids lagging spirits.

NSW here we come.