Going west - Venus Bay to Ceduna

We got a little cabin in the park here because all the sites were taken up by regulars who come for months at a time to fish.  The men are round with sweaters and beanies and the women look tough.  But everyone is friendly and full of advice.  Grant was a bit appalled at the place – really harsh with white sand and rock and just scrubby vegetation.  There are fossilized weevil cocoons all over the place that are known as “clogs’ and are about 100,000 years old.  We picked up a couple.

On the little beaches there are carpets of sea birds.  There is a sort of pattern, plump grey and white ones all together near the sealine and black ones with red beaks like straws a bit inland. No mixing.  They are not tame like the pelicans who are casual to the point of cheekiness.  If you creep up on the bird carpet it rises and sails away.

I went on a cliff track walk in a wind that made my nose hurt.  Extraordinary cliffs they were, like crazed stalagmites bashed into nasty shapes by the sea. Once I came on a huge overhang that had broken away and fallen and I kept away from the edge after that.  Tragedies have happened there – a six year old girl fell over not so long ago and two young men have a memorial to them on the cliff edge.  But we were told about the most appalling tragedy of all  by a couple of  fellow campers.  Aborigines will never come here because there was a massacre in the 19^th century when a group of them were driven over the cliffs into the sea.

We had a power cut last night so I cooked my scallops and boarfish by candlelight and very good they were too.

Today is Mothers’ Day and Grant cooked pancakes for breakfast and agreed to take me down a long dirt road to the only sea lion colony on Australia’s mainland after yesterday refusing to do so.  So glad I’m a mother and Australia is so soppy about Mother’s Day!  The drive was fascinating.  We saw water of a weird chemical blue, vestiges of a township called Calca with a derelict house opposite a catholic church.  Someone had daubed “NEW OWNER JESUS” on it.  I went inside the broken door and there was a mad chaos of detritis – a car steering wheel, a single boot, a surf board with peculiar holes in it and a couch devoid of covering – just horse hair or whatever.  Not an inch of the floor was clear. The beams were full of white ant tunneling and there was a ladder going up to the loft.  I didn’t go up it.  I am learning caution.  But it was a creepy place.

We went on to the seal colony.  After miles of  slippery sand and gravel we reached a viewing platform and I rushed out to see what I could see but initially it was nothing but a bleak rocky beach.  I looked more and it seemed to have some piles of slugs on it. Faintly repulsed I went and got the binoculars and there they were for all the world like they were recovering from a wild night out, flopped this way and that.  Fat and inert , some on their tummies and some on their backs.  Then one rose on his chest and humped along a bit leaving a track in the sand.  I tried to imagine what it was like to have to do that – no arms, no legs, just a whiskery face and a huge body to heave along.  I felt a moment of pity and then huge pleasure in being an efficiently adapted land animal.  I also really resolved to lose some weight.

We went back to the road and headed for Ceduna, the beginning of the Nullabor journey.  The caravan park is very full and the exchanges in the amenities block have changed from open questions to more closed ones. “Where have you come from/going to?” is now “Are you going east or west?”

Grant went out to the supermarket to get some beer and said he was asked for photo ID.  He asked why and was told there was a register of alcoholics and they were only allowed to buy one cask of wine a day.  Just as he was leaving the boy who was stacking the shelves came up to the checkout and said “That old man over there just jacketed”  “Right you are” she replied.

 On the face of it this town seems a sad and tough place but I will go exploring in a minute and see what I can see.