These little fellas are everywhere

I find the Yorke peninsula staggering at this time of the year. Wherever you drive, as far as the eye can see, you see grain fields. It is beautiful; fields of Barley, Wheat, Pulses and Green fertilizers that get ploughed straight back into the paddock, no wonder they call this Australia’s food basket. I cannot express things better than the link below. There you will find all the facts and pictures for this area. The link takes you to one of the main pages. Explore the many fantastic links from there.

http://www.harvestcorner.com.au/#!farming/c84j

After an hour of driving through cropping farms we arrived in Moonta. The town has a central park with a generous grassy area and many shady old Fig trees and public facilities. This is a reasonable size centre which proudly displays its rich copper mining heritage in the many well maintained churches, official buildings and miner’s cottages.

Great architecture

Moonta square

School of Mines

Miner’s cottage

The history is proudly displayed also in an artist’s contribution in the form of a collection of mining related sketches that include a picture of Elizabeth Woolcock, the only woman to be executed ever in South Australia. See pic below:

Artists sketches of mining

Elizabeth Woolcock

An internet search will reveal the following in Wikipedia:

Elizabeth Woolcock (20 April 1848 – 30 December 1873) was born Elizabeth Lillian Oliver in Burra Burra and was hanged in Adelaide Gaol for the murder of her husband Thomas Wollcock by mercury poisoning.

As one drives through the suburbs of Moonta one arrives in Moonta bay. The large jetty here is well known for being a good fishing and squidding spot. Just down the road is Port Hughes, another lovely coastal gem that is expanding rapidly.

Massive Jetty at Moonta Bay

From there we drove through an increasingly arid landscape to the port of Wallaroo. I found the shipping terminal with its massive ship loading infrastructure fascinating. Wallaroo is also a base for the trawling fleet and if you like boats you will enjoy having a look at the trawlers there.

Kadina has the ‘larger town’ feel as you drive through the light industry areas leading into the town. It is a great town with good public facilities and we went for a walk and stretched our legs before we made our way back to Port Vincent. There we spent a pleasant afternoon on the beach  swimming the dogs and soaking up the tranquility.

Port Vincent – even the fish like it!

Point Turton Caravan Park

Point Turton Tavern

Point Turton boat launch

Seascape

The following day we explored the foot of the Yorke Peninsula. We drove to Corny Point in the west and from there 5km along a good gravel road to the Corny Point lighthouse. It is in a great position at the north-west of the foot. There is a good swell running and in contrast to the flat bay it has a reasonable depth of water and rocks. There should be some good rock fishing to be had.

Dune flowers above the sea at Corny Point

Old Schoolhouse from the 1850s

Seascape at Corny Point

We then drove through a number of great little towns like Marion Bay, Yorktown, Edithburgh, Stansbury and Port Vincent, all of them charming. Back at Point Turton I did some fishing on the pier and ended up with some squid that I have frozen and will use as bait for some fishing later in this trip.

Point Turton Pier