Cactus beach – Ceduna – Smokey Bay – Streaky Bay – Granites (Pt Westall) – Murphys Haystacks-Venus Bay – Talia Caves - Elliston

Ceduna – a pretty clean town with Norfolk pines down the main street – one of each type of shop, a foodland – IGA – very well stocked, local indigenous to make you feel welcome – watch out for any wine you have in your trolley-don’t turn your back…..

Murray pushed the trolley thru the main street laden with food and liquid, books from the op shops to stock up the van and back again to the supermarket. We used the trolley in the camping ground to load our dried washing into and back to the van – just like the locals – only we are a different colour.

A very clean camping ground on the foreshore – next time we will state we have a longer van-trying to fit between 2 other smaller vans – which we did-avoiding the tree which left  us only able to put up 3 legs as we didn’t have enough room to turn our leg jack. No room to put out chairs for a drink so off to the local foreshore hotel for a lovely feed of oysters, prawns, baked snapper and whiting – accompanied by the shiraz and nz sauvy blanc. A sunset poked itself through the Norfolk pines . After dinner a stroll on the jetty to watch the locals feed the pelican.

Leaving Ceduna on the Friday we headed to Smokey Bay to buy Murray’s oysters @ $6 dozen in the shell. Drove through Streaky Bay and started to looking for our next camp spot- Pt Westall – free camping on a cliff – another couple joined us. Saturday – no sun so ran the genie, watched some dvds, when suddenly the wind changed and the awning jumped- a sand storm arrived, our neighbour Bill came and helped us take it down, secure. Fortunately the boys were inside-but dust and sand throughout…. We managed to last 5 days here-eventually the wind drove us away – 67 knt winds the last straw, plus we had bees for neighbours and they had started to swarm up our sullage hose.

Murphy’s Haystacks at Cacla – a great tourist spot – Inselberg Rocks – similar to wave rock material and the Avebury Rocks in the UK. Very clean flush toilets here.

Next top Venus Bay – we had heard so much about this place – I expected a lush clean green bay of commericalisim – rather like Ceduna – alas – it is a lime sand bay no greenery around, plenty of water-commercial sardine fishing village? With a camping ground on the foreshore-stop here if you have a boat or love to fish off the jetty. We stayed for 2 hours – Murray caught a herring and a man we had met the other day at the granites gave us a small kawahai. Superman met a young girl from Pinjarra and had his photo taken. We had a lovely lunch of whiting and chips washed down with Watties Tomato Sauce! Wines were cheap in the local shop so a few bottles managed to be seconded to the truck.

 Colton Bakery on the side of the road – Flinders Highway provided Murray with a chance to try their bread – they are not always open –so we were indeed lucky.

Tomorrow?

Talia Caves provided a refreshing stop – with a walkway to the cave and rock formation.

photos to come...



 As we were only 28 kms from Elliston – we decided to call in for the night – do a wash and stock up with water. And here we caught up with Bill and Ma