Bound for WA

30th June 2013

We woke to a very cold & foggy morning this morning and after packing down we continued westward on the Eyre Hwy. Again today really was a travelling day as we need to get some Km's under our belt in order to make it back to WA in a reasonable time frame.

Travelling West - Eyre Hwy

Our first stop for the day was at a little town called Kimba, with its claim to fame being the "Big Galah" and the tag line of being "Halfway Across Australia". So after our stop for the mandatory photo and souvenir pin shopping we once again hit the road.

The Big Galah - Halfway Across Australia

We decided to take a detour from they highway and drive down to the coast and check out Streaky Bay but before we did we had to make another stop in Poochera for a large roadside statue of a Dinosaur Ant. This ant was first discovered here in 1977 and apparently was the most closely related to the ants of the dinosaur era, hence the name.

Me & Chloe in front of Dinosaur Ant Statue

We made it to Streaky Bay around 1pm where we enjoyed lunch on the foreshore area of the town which overlooks the bay and jetty. The girls enjoyed running on the beach for a while after this while Rach and wandered out on the Jetty and got chatting to a local fisherman, who was happy to tell us a few stories of the "ones that got away".

Streaky Bay

We had to stop for fuel on the way out of town and found the replica statue of the largest Great White Shark caught on a rod from the waters of Streaky Bay back in 1990. Amazingly this shark measured in at 5m and took the fisherman over 5hrs to land it. It certainly made for a chilling reminder as to why they had safe swimming cages attached to the main jetty in the town.

The girls with replica of Great White

We then followed the coast on the way to Ceduna, passing through another seaside town called Smoky Bay, which really reminded us of Cervantes just north of Perth. Once we reached Ceduna, we decided to drive on further to the town of Penong, about 70kms away and find a turn off to Cactus Beach where Rach had read was a great place to camp.

We found the turn off and made the 21km trip on unsealed road, which changed from gravel and salt flat surface until we reached the camp spot. We had chatted to another traveller earlier in the day and seemingly the owner of the now camp ground purchased the land, about 550 acres in 1980 for about $4000, given its location and absolute beauty, it certainly was a bargain.

Cactus Beach

The large but very spacious bush camp, was set just behind the dunes to the beach and after setting up we wandered down to the beach which was less than 100m away and enjoyed watching a beautiful sunset over the ocean, something we haven't seen for a couple of months now, which was just magic.

The girls on Cactus Beach

The girls at Sunset - Cactus Beach