4 – 19 March 2023

Our short drive north from Lipson cove brought us to the tiny town of Port Neill and its 130 (ish) permanent residents. With a cheap camp run by the local Progress Association, water, dump point, toilets, jetty, pub, general store and bowls club, we had everything we needed for a great stay. A fun fact about the history of Port Neill. Back in 1911 the new publican (Mr Habib) had built the hotel for the rapidly growing town but could not get a liquor licence as there was not enough people living there at that point. So with that in mind, Mr Habib paid people to move into the town and live in humpies and tents just to get the town’s population to the point where the authorities would grant him the liquor licence. In 1912, the licence was finally granted and the pub opened. Now that’s dedication!

We finally met up with Tony & Sheryn, who, like us, drove over 2,000km to catch up. It’s been over 10 years since we last saw each other when we were traveling around oz. There was so much to catch up on as so much has happened in our lives in that time.

Port Neill was fabulous. Our first night everyone surprised me with a birthday party, complete with decorations and a cake with an entire packet of sparklers. Pete thought it was a fantastic idea to tape all 16 sparklers together, light them all at once and put them in the cake. Every ‘do not…’ on the back of the sparklers packet was broken in that instant. We have never seen such an explosion of sparks. The flame ball from the seemingly innocent sparklers nearly reached the awning roof. Even the plastic pink table cloth melted onto the table. I must say though it was the funniest thing we have seen in a long time and we all had a fun night.

We tried squidding from the jetty and boat ramp rock wall. Pete didn’t do too badly (unlike Tony and I). There was swimming and snorkeling at the beaches where the boys got some abalone and speared some fish. We tried out the newly re-opened pub for a drink and chatted to the locals. We visited the bowls club for schnitzel night and utilised the foreshore bbq for dinner. The stay was very relaxing…until the last 3 days. The weather decided to put on a show and smashed us with 3 days in a row of 40+ degrees. It wouldn’t have been so bad had our generator (to run the caravan air conditioner) decided to work. All we could do to keep cool was to have a swim at the beach (until the northerly winds made even that unbearably hot), have a cold shower, sit in the shade of the awning and just wait it out until the southerly breeze came in. Even the blue swimmer crabs were cranky with one biting me on the foot when I was swimming. Thankfully the winds did change each afternoon and we could start to cool off. As we left Port Neill and headed to Arno Bay in the extreme heat, even the cars’ air conditioner decided that it didn’t want to work. Now we have a few things on our ‘to look at’ list.

Arno Bay is only around 40km further up the road so it was a short 30 minute drive. We arrived in the scorching heat and decided to forgo the very cheap parking lot behind the pub, and opted instead for the cool green grass (and power) of the caravan park. The park has beach frontage with the jetty right beside it. We walked the jetty each of our 5 days here and tried fishing, crabbing and squidding. The strong winds had brought in so much sea weed, the water looked like a brown, muddy soup bowl so wasn’t the best. We did manage to catch a bucket full of herring one day and a squid on another, so wasn’t a complete disaster. We explored the area including the mangrove boardwalk, Red Banks beach and Salt Creek. We visited the pub for a lovely meal and bought a dozen of the largest oysters we have ever seen from the caravan park owner. We had to call Pete the caravan repair man to sort out our hot water system one afternoon which was leaking inside the cupboard. Being jammed in the cupboard was not really on the agenda, but you have to do what you have to do. It was nice to be back on some (very rare) grass, but was time to move on in more hospitable weather conditions.

Another 30 minutes up the road, we arrived in the town of Cowell for a few nights. A new 22 site RV camp on the edge of town was the choice for our stay. When we were last in Cowell in 2014 there were a plethora of blue swimmer crabs. All you needed was one crab net to drop in the water and watch as all the crabs crawled in. Now however, with the weather being a little all over the place lately, the crabbing and fishing had diminished dramatically. If you had a boat (and we don’t), you could get out into the Franklin Harbour and get your fill of crabs in no time. It seems that all the crabs went out into a bit deeper water and away from the main marina area. We picked up a few but nothing to write home about. The town has had a major redevelopment of the foreshore and surrounds over the last 10 years too. A great water park and playground accessible to everyone sits at the marina with new amenities too. It was actually great to see so much progress in this small town. Now for another odd story to come out of exploring Cowell. in 1972, as a New Year’s prank, a very large black tree stump was placed between two rival hotels with a sign that said “Best pub this side of the black stump.” Apparently the stump was stolen (who knows how) and a new 2,000kg stump was put in its place. The stump is now seen as a tribute to the history of the area.

Some of the best things about South Australia are the number of small towns dotted all along the coast of the peninsulas, the infrastructure (camps, water points, dump points, jetties etc) which encourages tourists in their caravans/campers into the towns and of course the seafood. It really is a great place to explore. As we head ever closer to Easter, it’s time to think about where we will be, along with the thousands of other holiday makers in the area. Nightly drinks are the best place to solve the world’s problems and Easter holidays are definitely one of them, so lets see where we end up next…