Life in Retirement

Friday, February 19, 2021

Coffin Bay SA

16th Dec I don’t suppose we are any different from anyone nor anywhere when it comes to weather conditions, why we should think that relocating 40 or 50 kilometres or a couple of hundred for that matter would change weather conditions dramatically, I think gets down to wishful thinking. Relocating from Port Lincoln to Coffin Bay with anticipation was really only another opportunity to have a whinge and an excuse for any frumpishness. Coffin Bay is situated on the western tip of southern Eyre Peninsula, the village or town as the brochures describe it , ‘overlooks the pristine waters of Port Douglas named after Captain Bloomfield Douglas’, it is part of ‘an extensive sheltered bay system that includes other settlements by the names of Little Douglas, Mount Dutton, Kellidie, Yangi and Coffin Bay’. To the north west Coffin Bay Peninsula juts out into the Great Australian Bight, this huge rugged peninsula is all national park and acts as a natural protection barrier for the waters of Port Douglas, against the wild seas of the Bight. Coffin Bay was actually discovered and named by Lieutenant Mathew Flinders the intrepid explorer and navigator we all know so well from our school days. ‘Flinders and his crew of the Investigator, discovered the bay on 16th Feb 1802 but it was after his return to England eight years later in 1810 that he named the bay after Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, who as Resident Commissioner of Sheerness Naval Dockyards in England had been responsible for outfitting of the Investigator for Flinders voyage to Terra Australis.’ - Coffin Bay Visitors Information I have read somewhere that Isaac Coffin in charge of the dockyard and having ship building experience ensured the Investigator was strengthened and well equipped for this particular exploration to Terra Australis. Like any fishing village Coffin Bay is a pretty place and extremely picturesque when the sun is out, but like most places in Australia the weather since we have been here has been quite fickle usually starting off overcast and grey first thing and quite cold and then eventually if it doesn’t rain the sun comes out and it is reasonably warm providing you can get out of the wind and each day it seems to blow from a different direction so it is all over the place, even the locals have had enough. Fishing is the main activity here (only activity) but you need a boat, just a tinny is fine but fishing off the jetty although considered good only produces undersize whiting, Tommy Ruffs (herring) and squid occasionally, a lot of good looking points and bays offering promise produce much the same thing if anything, locals tell us shore fishing is a bit quiet at the moment but the boaties seem to come back with a good feed. For general fishing every one uses cockles for bait and squid if they can catch it, what we call eugerie or pipis is also called cockles down here and they sell them to you for $10 a small bag probably a kilo, a commercial boat dredges or pumps cockles somewhere in this region and these are bagged for bait and human consumption, nearby accessible cockle beds only have very small shells not big enough for use. Ask the question and no you can’t pump yabbies here, they have yabby farms (fresh water Maron) and no idea what you are talking about when trying to describe our yabbies. Fortunately we had enough experience to seek out a beach where we were able to find large eugerie/pipi and managed to find in another locality our typical yabbie – didn’t help the fishing but it saved us some money. We drove several kilometres today to a recognised good fishing spot where one can catch everything from King George Whiting, squid, snapper, salmon and garfish to name a few. Legal length for KG whiting in SA is 31cm, here it is 30cm as it is classified as a nursery and the fish don’t grow any larger in this area before moving into deeper water, if the measurement was 31cm no one would get any fish ??? - personally I thought that was the idea of legal lengths. Anyway before the strong cold wind finally drove us out of this fishing location we had caught and released several undersize whiting and had one keeper and probably used about $25 dollars worth of bait, just as well we found our own. Talking to another hardy local fisherperson in the know, I discovered that this was the best spot to catch snapper but I’m still not sure if he said it was a bit too early or a bit late for snapper, at least I had one more fish than he did. 17th Dec Today we are driving back to Port Lincoln to do some shopping and a change of scenery for the day. Our plans for the next week or so have changed also, originally we had intended staying here until after Christmas, we have decided to travel at leisure back to Adelaide’s Belair National Park area and spend more time in the Adelaide locality, Christmas will probably be celebrated on the road somewhere. I’ll post some photos later.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

12th November We are Home

12^th November 2014

We are home.

From Singleton we drove to Sawtell a small coastal town just short of Coffs Harbour spent two nights there and then on Monday 10^th we continued north expecting to spend one more night on the road before getting home but as it turned out we made such good progress and gaining an hour crossing the border that we decided to continue all the way home, it’s always nice to get home.

The caravan park at Sawtell is first class, well set out with plenty of shade trees if you want them, amenities are excellent, quiet and peaceful. It is a short walk into the township (village) where there is the usual choice of restaurants, takeaways and numerous places to enjoy the now days habitual coffee. There’s an array of small shops baker and butcher and small boutiques and a popular pub on the corner that sells great meals. Ten minutes away by car in the next small town is a large shopping complex that has it all, WW, Coles Aldi etc.

The Coffs Harbour region is a very attractive part of the NSW coastline, we will probably come back this way sometime and spend a bit of time exploring the various little centres along the coast. In fact I think the bulk of the NSW coast is very attractive.

Nancy hasn’t had any coughing fits since being home so cutting our trip short was probably the right thing to do.

I’ll post some pics later.

7th November 2014

7^th November 2014

Tonight we have stopped at a very mundane caravan park in Singleton. We left Canberra yesterday morning our time was up and none of were interested in extending in fact none of us really liked the place. Nancy is still crook with some sort of virus that started as a head cold and is now sitting on her chest although she is not coughing up anything (she’s even crankier than normal), and she just wants to get back to Queensland and some warmth. During our week stay in Canberra we managed to catch up with relation of Nancy’s for a BBQ lunch and that was a great afternoon. We visited the Telstra Tower, Glass Works, Portrait Gallery, National Gallery, National Museum, Old Parliament House, New Parliament House and the War Memorial twice. We obviously didn’t waste any time and appreciated what we did see but by the end of the week we were ready to move on. Personally I was disappointed with Canberra’s visual appearance, nice tree lined streets but grass on verges and in all the parks was half a metre long and looked dreadfully untidy. Our ‘Capital’ on show. Scruffy would be a good description.

From Canberra I suggested we should head back to Sydney as it was the quickest route north but I was outvoted and we headed for Bathurst (warmer???). Last night we stayed at Bathurst where I had the pleasure of checking out 40 or 50 vintage and classic motorbikes whose proud owners were enjoying a four day rally, these beautiful old machines all working and in show room condition were being rallied at different venues and they were all staying at the caravan park – it made my day.

After a mild overnight frost, at least that’s what I told the others we set our course to head through Mudgee and on to the Golden Highway to eventually bring us out on the Pacific Hwy north of Newcastle. We drove through some very scenic countryside both before Bathurst and up through Mudgee but it was steep and slow going and by the time we got to Singleton we had gone through a tank full of fuel and driven most of the day. Nancy sheepishly admitted we should have gone directly from Canberra to Sydney so I told her not to worry I had enjoyed the scenery, just needed a bank loan to pay for the fuel. Tomorrow we will pull up somewhere on the NSW coast for a couple of days hopefully I can get some WiFi.