Eyre Peninsula

After the Nullabor, we spent about a month exploring the Eyre Peninsula. We first stopped in Ceduna where we had to go through South Australia quarantine as it’s the first town after the Nullabor. We stopped there just for a couple of days to wash our clothes and our bodies. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos of Ceduna… sorry!

Smokey Bay

We stopped in the small town of Smokey Bay for lunch. Smokey Bay is famous for oysters so of course, we had to try some!

Streaky Bay

Our next stop was Streaky Bay where we stayed for a week. Our caravan park was right on the water with its own beach. It was a lovely park and we went walking each day along the beach. Here are some photos of the caravan park and beach:

At this park, even play time came with a view.

We went for a drive around the peninsula just south of Streaky Bay where they had some beautiful views and blow holes:

There was also something called the Whistling Rocks that was pretty cool – you can hear it on this video:

Perlubie Beach

This is a beach that several people recommended for us to camp at – $10 per night. However, after reading several reviews about water nearly coming into people’s caravans at high tide, we decided not to risk it. But, we did spend a lovely afternoon there.

Murphy’s Haystacks

These are some huge and pretty cool rock formations located on a farm with an amazing view over the countryside. The rocks have been eroded by water and rain over millennia to create these shapes.

After we left Streaky Bay, we headed south along the west coast and did some free camping along the way.

We stopped at the town of Baird Bay which was going to be our first night of camping, but the campground was tiny and the town really wasn’t that nice. However, there were tons of pelicans that I just had to take a picture of!

Lake Newland Nature Reserve

Thank god we drove on because we arrived at this great, free camp spot. It is a reserve for bird life that flies down all the way from the artic to give birth at the beach. (I was sure that I must have misread that and assumed they meant they flew from the antarctic, but nope – the sign clearly said ‘arctic’!!)

It was a bit difficult to get the van into the camping area, but once there we had a great view over the ocean.

This reserve was on the same road as the Talia Caves, so the next morning we headed out and explored some of the caves.

The two last photos above show the best cave. You can get more of a feeling of what it was like (and sounded like) watching these two videos below showing the huge waves pounding in – although the perspective didn’t really come out in the videos – the waves look much smaller than they actually were! (Ignore the lady in the second video in the background who seemed to have a death wish!)

Horrocks Lookout

We stayed a couple of nights at this free camp. What an amazing spot! It was right on the cliff with an amazing view and sand dunes all behind. It’s best explained by photos.

The views:

The sand dunes:

The sunsets:

Coffin Bay

This was another place that was recommended to us by several people. We couldn’t be bothered to go into the national park here and do any of the 4WD tracks, but the town was really nice with beautiful views over a calm bay.

Koalas

We stopped at a place where Wikicamps said you had a good chance of seeing koalas in the trees. We ended up spotting 4. There are pretty camouflaged and didn’t really come out in the photos.

Port Lincoln

We stayed in Port Lincoln for a couple of weeks while we worked and explored the area. We had to change our van site during our stay and had a great ocean view from the caravan at both sites.

The town itself was also pretty nice considering it’s a port town (much better than many of the port towns that we’ve seen on this trip!). They made an effort to have a nice waterfront area with some statues, park land and a jetty.

While we were there, R also did a day trip to do a cage dive with Great White Sharks. They saw 2 Great Whites on the day. Here are some photos (we may also upload some videos at a later date).

Whyalla

We only stayed in Whyalla for a couple of days to work/school, but our caravan site with right on the beach!

While we were there, R and the kids went out for a snorkel to see the Giant Cuttlefish migration and mating which happens here annually between the months of May and August. Apparently, the only place in the world where they congregate in such high numbers. You can read more about it here if you’re interested.