Finding friends and fish in Port Lincoln

It has been a beautiful and instructive day.  I walk the gorgeous coastal track into town which was peppered with slightly rusty informative panels. I learn that

“The shoreline here is composed of metamorphic gneiss with intrusions of igneous dolorite dykes”

 After that I look at the wild rocky shore there with a new and slightly nervous respect But it is all so beautiful - wild flowers  and pelicans who come to see you if you throw a stone into the water.  I guess they think it’s a fish jumping.  They are lovely mad birds which seem graceful and ungainly at the same time.

I lost the path when I came to the business part of the port  which is dominated by huge wheat silos and fuel tanks and Keep Out notices and then I drifted into the suburbs until a kind postman directed me to the town centre.  On the map it is marked Dry Zone which  refers to not being able to drink alcohol there.  As in all caravan parks the prohibited activities are indicative of what people must really want to do.  No water bombing, no use of talcum powder, no fish cleaning, no showering in wetsuits and no noise after 10pm. Both Port Augusta and here have Dry Zones.

As usual I was after fish, and Grant was reading a thesis back at the camp site. I was turning the map this way and that working out how to get to “The Fish Place”  when  a weathered looking man called out from the pub “You lost?” (Dry Zone only applies to feral drinking in the streets and parks.)  He was having a beer with his mate who added, rather unnecessarily I thought, “We won’t eat you”  The long and short of it was I bought myself a drink and joined them and we introduced ourselves and they offered to drive me to the fish market.  They bought butterfish and I bought prawns and a red fish with a strange name as well as scallops.  We’d become friends by then.  Both had lived in Alice Springs and were not working.  Rodney was an electrician who said his body was all worn out and Steve was building himself a house.  They told me a lot about Port Lincoln including the story of  heroic 12 year old Frank Hawson who died defending  the womenfolk in his family from aborigines in 1840.  There was a lot of tension when farmers began grazing  traditional aboriginal hunting grounds and attempts were made by farmers to placate the natives by giving them food when they came to the shepherds huts.  One day a group arrived at the Hawsons’ place when the menfolk were away and something went wrong.  Young Frank drove off the aborigines and protected his mother, grandmother  and sisters but was speared himself and died.  The curious thing is  that nothing much was made of the incident until 1911 when a memorial was set up in a little park.  We tracked this down with the help of the kind staff of a primary school who were intrigued by the story too. Hardly anyone local knows about it now. We stayed by the monument and mused a little on the muddle and unfairness of cross cultural dealings in those days, and in these days too I suppose.

Rodney and Steve also told me about how Port Augusta used to be a ghastly drunken place but a female Mayor “who was worse than Margaret Thatcher” sorted it all out and now it was nice tidy town.  Not like Alice Springs, Rodney added darkly.

I waved goodby to my friends at the caravan park and Grant and I sat down and worked out how long we had left and realized we’d have to get a move on if we were going to make Perth on time.  I had a hankering to swim with seals and dolphins so we headed for a place called Venus Bay.  Unfortunately I am the only person who wants to do this, it being  cold and windy and so no boats are going out. I’ve settled for shore walking instead and its probably for the best.  Grant says this place is bleak and horrible but I love it.  Pelicans everywhere who clap their beaks when given fish scraps and weird Alice in Wonderland looking birds called Mollyhawks whose beaks are the shape of a snarl.  Black swans too.

There are various groups of friendly old people here who apparently come for long stretches every year and fish for the exquisite whiting in the Bay They are all plump and brown and a lot of the men have white beards.  They seem very happy.

We have a lovely dinner planned for tonight.  Grant is making paella with all sorts of seafood bought in another fish market on the way out of  Port Lincoln.  One item  is called Boarfish.

I am looking forward to dinner.