Hi all

Since my last blog we have travelled from Streaky Bay and spent 3 days in Ceduna.  Ceduna is the last town of any great size before you head across the Nullabour.  It is also about 300 kilometres from the Head of the Australian Bite, where the southern right whales come every year to have their babies.  If you read all of the information bureau stuff, and even on line rubbish, they say that the whales arrive in May and stay until October/November.  They also say that there are up to 150 whales there at any given time.  Hmmmmmm, we will see.  According to the Information Bureau and the on line whale watching site, there may be up to 7 whales there at the moment.  Forgot to mention they are 2 klms off shore.  Will keep checking about the whales over our time in Ceduna. 

We got ourselves settled into the Foreshore Caravan Park and although it is quite small, we got a great site.  Similar to most of this trip, we look out of the window to the ocean.  We arrived here after lunch on a Saturday and just about the whole town is closed.  There are just over 2000 people in Ceduna, with a fairly high indigenous population.  The streets were pretty well deserted on both the Saturday and Sunday.  We did a bit of touring around the town and headed out to check out the huge silo and wharf area.

Just looking around, I would guess that the wharf area would be the biggest employer in the town, with maybe the hospital being next.  The silo/wharf area is huge.  Being a Sunday we got to check it out in peace.  There was a huge mountain of salt in a small compound just next to the wharf.  The statistics of the wharf are fairly incredible.  Over a year they ship out 1.8 million tonnes of Gypsum, 130,000 tonnes of Salt, 140,000 tonnes of grain, 600,000 tonnes of mineral sands and 1800 tonnes of fish.  That is a total of 222 huge tankers that pick up produce from this wharf.

 

There is a monument at Pinky Point Lookout, just around from the wharf, that is in memory of those that have lost their lives at sea.  From there we checked out another tourist attraction being Shelley Beach.  Maybe it was named after someone called Shelley because it was not really what I expected. Lots of seaweed covering maybe some shells.  We will never know.

 

We checked out a really neat and tidy looking sporting complex.  The Far West Aboriginal Sporting Complex.  The home of the Ceduna Roosters.  What a great set up.  A basketball court, netball court, football oval, tennis court and of course a gym.  This day it was totally empty, probably all playing away games.

Back at the van and time for a quiet stroll along the pier.  You will never guess, but yes, our friendly dolphin from Whyalla had followed us to Ceduna.  Took a shot from the pier of the caravan park and you can see our van on the far left.  Back at the van in time to get a good shot of a great sunset, with the pier in the photo.

 

On the Monday it was off to check out the town on Penong, about 70 k's from Ceduna.  They have a windmill museum in the town so we had to check it out.  It was actually very interesting.  There were heaps of all different size windmills in the centre of the town. (pop. only a couple of hundred)

Their prize exhibit is a Comet Windmill.  This is the largest windmill in Australia, and is still in working order.  There were only ever 15 of these windmills made, with records found for only 3 that can be located.  The original was owned by the government and was used to provide water to the railways.  These windmills are capable of drawing water from 500 feet underground and pumping 250,000 gallons of water a day.

Comet Windmill 

There were all types of windmills on display, ranging from a home made one up to a swing operated pumping system that Deb had to try out.  It actually worked, as the more she swung, the more water came out from the pump.  Very ingenious.

 

The first windmill was erected on this site in 2015 and they now have 19 different windmills.  This has been a labour of love by the town, with most of the windmills being donated to the town from all over Australia.  The only problem was that the townspeople had to pick them up.  A huge amount of work has gone into it, with all of the windmills having to be dismantled, transported back to Penong and then repaired and put back together.  A job well done really. 

We then went for a drive out to Point Sinclair, about 20 k's from Penong.  We came across a huge area where there are piles of white sand?? that seem to go for miles.  We have since found out that this is the area where they mine Gypsum, that is then transported by huge road trains into the wharf at Ceduna.  In the distance we can also see some sort of huge sheds, but we were unable to get any closer.  That is the area where the salt mining takes place.

We continued along that road and came to a point where the road travels between 2 lakes.  The lake on the right had a decidedly pinkish colour to it and it is a salt lake.  It depends on the sun as to how pink the lake is.  On a hot sunny day it is extremely pink, or so say the Information centre and google.  Sadly today it is a bit overcast but you can still see the pink colour.

Bloody hitch-hikers

 

A bit further on and we arrived at Point Sinclair.  We checked out Cactus Beach and the camping site at Point Sinclair.  We both think it is a bit expensive to camp there.  All they had was a long drop toilet, very little cover and nothing else.  You are definitely camping in the scrub and all for the cost of $15 per adult and $5 per child.  You can't even swim on the beach as it is on the Great Australian Bite and it is very rough.  Not for us.  But then again, the sign saying No Drones, maybe we have stumbled onto a Nudey camp.  Quick lets get out of here.

We stopped at the tiny Penong café/store/takeaway shop for a coffee and had to take a photo of the sign out the front.  It is almost true, there are probably no more shops for 1000 kilometres but there are several roadhouses.

On the way out to Penong we saw a church sitting all by itself out in a paddock so we decided to check it out on the way back.  It turns out it was the Denial Bay Lutheran Church.  This church began conducting services way back in 1896 and of course they recently celebrated their centenary.  The church is still in use today and is in great condition.  There is a cemetery at the rear of the church that appears to still be in use as well.  We continued on to the tiny fishing village of Denial Bay and from the jetty you can see the town of Ceduna.  It is probably only about 10 k's from Ceduna.  They are big over here on painting murals on their public toilets, which is a good touch. 

As a final check before leaving Ceduna it was back on to the whale watching site and alas, nothing had changed.  We were actually going to do the 600 km round trip if the whales had arrived at The Head of the Bite.  Maybe next time.

Anyway the next exciting blog will cover the trip from Ceduna to Hawker.  We will be stopping in the tiny town of Kimba on the way and checking out some other local attractions.  I know you will be hanging out for that. 

Bye for now. 

Barry and Deb.