Erye Penninsula

 After Port Augusta we worked our way down the east coast of the Eyre Penninsula. The first night we camped outside of Whyalla on beautiful red beach dunes. I've never seen beach dunes this beautiful rusty iron red before and I was so happy to get to see it in person. It matched the orange sunset beautifully that evening.

The next morning we drove south to Cleve. Along the way we stopped at a mangrove boardwalk and saw the furthest south reaching species of mangrove. We set up camp in Cleve near a nature preserve and went on a really lovely walk through the forest there. We found beautiful little orchids and some really unique sundews (a carnivorous plant). It was really cool to see this beautiful remnant forest a bit back from the coast. The path was along a dry river bed and was stunning with so many unique plants. 

The next day we headed to Port Lincoln a cute coastal town in the south of the Eyre penninsula. We spent the day there at a french bakery eating pastries and going to the library, before we went to the Port Lincoln National Park to camp for a few nights. 

Despite being only a short distance from the town of Port Lincoln, the park felt beautifully isolated. We camped on the penninsula overlooking the ocean. It was absolutely stunning and I spent most of the evening walking along the shoreline. The next day we spent the entire day walking around the national park. We saw some kangaroos and emus off in the distance and enjoyed the various sea birds. We walked many beaches and the diversity of the beaches was really astounding. One beach was entirely made up of tiny clam shells. You had to dig down a couple inches to get to the sand. The smooth tiny shells were mostly white or cream, but occasionally I found one that was orange as a traffic cone, yellow as big bird, or more commonly purple like a plum. It was such a cool beach and the water was so crystal clear. If only it was a bit warmer it would have been a beautiful place to swim, but nonetheless, I enjoyed the beach. A bit further down the coast we found another beach. It had steep cliffs of sandstone that had unique textures and shapes where the sand around it had eroded unevenly preserving the shape of roots or waterways that once were in the place of the stone. Here the beach was a soft tan sand. A bit further down was a rock beach, made up of large brick red stones. These often had deep pockets along the edge of the water that made tidal pools filled with snails, crabs, sea anenomes, and other sealife. I found very few uninhabited shells here. As I continued to the next beach I found dark, deep red rocks that had lighter red and yellow spots within the color of the rock creating a beautiful pattern. These rocks were rarely eroded and were about a foot or two across forming large boulders. The final beach I came across wasn't so much a beach, but a shoreline of huge boulders. Likely granite, 20 feet across, light gray, and covered in little more than red, yellow, and orange lichens. They were resting spots for shore birds and often painted white with guano. It was really interesting to walk a short coastline along the day and see all the variations in substrates and life along the way. It was lovely. 

Our next stop was Coffin Bay National Park where we spent 3 nights. The campground was full of the cheekiest kangaroos which often siddled up to us to see if we had anything to feed them. We didn't, I'd give them a little pat on the head and try to send them on their way with various levels of success. The national park also had a lot of emus and we came across a male with 3 babies along the road. They were so fluffy and cute, although I was glad to come across them in my vehicle where they wouldn't be bothered by me. In emus, like cassowaries, the male rears the chicks to maturity. The female lays the eggs and leaves, the entire responsibility of raising chicks left to the male. He forgoes food for 55 days after the eggs are laid while he sits on them and then he will raise them for 20 months, teaching them how to survive in the wild. Such a cool species. At Coffin Bay, I enjoyed going on a variety of walks in the different ecosystems seeing salt marsh, limestone cliffs, huge sand dunes, beaches. In town we walked the oyster trail and I learned about the historic and current oyster beds of the region. 

After Coffin Bay we returned to Port Lincoln for a day before I headed up north to Whyalla on my own. In Whyalla I booked a private scuba tour to see the giant cuttlefish mating display. It was absolutely magical. We spent 1.5 cold hours in the water, where I joyously shivered watching a hundred cuttlefish display their fantastic colors and patterns. They created psychodelic displays on their skin showing off to eachother. The smallest were probably 10 inches and the largest maybe 20 inches. They can change their based color from white to red, with a crazy display of every single color. Their skin looked like an old television display colorful and fuzzy. It sometimes changes colors in waves or in growing circles or lines across their bodies. They were also so curious and would swim right up and look you in the face. It was absolutely magical. The scuba instructor I went with was fantastic too. He is an american who moved here 5 years ago and opened his dive company, but then has started a non-profit where they do citizen science and conservation. We talked a lot about conservation and it was really great to discuss ideas. If I come back through here we hope to reconnect and see if we can do some other cool dives together. It was a magical experience. We also chatted a lot after the dive and he gave me lots of good information and it was just a really great experience.