Streaky Bay / Mudgee / Brisbane

We filled up on blue swimmer crabs at Ceduna, Garry finished his last two holes of the Nullabor Links and got the Certificate to prove it, and we moved over to Streaky Bay.  We enjoyed morning tea at Smoky Bay on the way over which has a large oyster farming industry going on.  The locals all told us that the Smoky Bay oysters were as good or better than Coffin Bay ones but we have yet to confirm that. The van park at Streaky Bay is right on the shore of the bay and we got a good site with shade and the small high tides coming to within 10m of the van. There are plenty of pelicans and seagulls to keep us company as well as galahs, cockatoos, and willy wagtails hopping around the annex.  We seem to be the only ones in the park without a tinny but the tinny owners all seem to spend 10 times as long working on the boats as being in them fishing.  We watched one guy spend about 10 hours over 3 days just unloading his, assembling the trailer and loading the boat, then putting a cover on it and still never got it wet.  All of this effort was no more than 20m from the water!! The tide goes out a long way even though it only rises less than a metre and there are whiting and salmon to be caught we have been told.

Blue Swimmer Crabs from Ceduna pier

Limestone Cliffs on the southern coast near Streaky Bay

great southern ocean pounding in...

We met the owner of the Mitre 10 and Garry spent a bit of time getting to know the store and the staff ready to start work mid Feb.  Carol will also get to spend some time back in a Hardware store doing a stocktake by the looks.  The new boss is Paul and he is very friendly and easy to talk to.  We invited the kids over to the west while we were there and Brendan and Michelle came over with the boys.  As we are going to work for several weeks in Streaky Bay we decided to take a trip east to catch up with the other two families and drove across the Eyre Peninsular to Port Lincoln and flew from there to Sydney to visit Fabian, Emily, Elliot and Violet for a few days. Mudgee has had some rain and the place is beautiful and green and looks so good compared to SA and WA which are in the middle of their dry season.  After seeing Elliot’s new school, Violets new Kindy, and enjoying some great food at a winery and at home, we flew up to Brisbane for a few days to catch up with Kirsty and Ben and their family.  We got to see Isobel’s new school and Madelaine’s new Kindy and managed to build Grace a monkey shaped walker/trolley.  Isobel and Elliot started Grade 1 this year and both seemed to go ok.  Violet and Madelaine started ‘big girl’ Kindy and neither of them had trouble setting off on their next adventure following their older brother/sister.

We enjoyed seeing the rest of the kids and grandkids and are now ready to settle into a few weeks of work back at Streaky Bay.

We were a bit sad that we missed the Tamworth Country Music Festival this year.  It finished last week and we were a bit jealous of Russ and Jane when they headed off again.  We hope they enjoyed it and will have to be a bit closer than South Australia next year. 

Port Lincoln is quite a pretty town with all the shops/services/marinas you could want.  The bay and foreshore is clean and well kept.  All of the Eyre Peninsula is wheat growing country and there are big grain depots, silos, and ports in every town. January is however the middle of the dry season and the countryside looks very dry, dead, and dusty.  It must look pretty during/after the winter rains.  Streaky Bay only averages 12 inches of rain per year and has been getting less than that lately so water is precious in town.  It’s tough not being able to wash the dust off the car and van.  While we are over east we booked the car in to have the timing belt changed as it is due at 150,000km and we just passed that on the Nullabor.  After more than 2 years of perfect reliability it decided to not start on the morning we were heading across to Port Lincoln.  A jump start got it going and we got over there but it was not what we needed on the day we wanted to move the van from the van park into a M10 yard for storage and drive 350km to the garage.