Breath of fresh Eyre

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After welcoming in the New Year in Adelaide, our next stop is Port Lincoln on the eastern side of the Eyre Peninsula. While eastern Australia continues to choke and burn the air is clean on the Eyre, but fires are blocking our path to the west. The Eyre highway to Perth has basically been closed by fires near Norseman in WA since Boxing Day, so we are currently becalmed hoping the road west will reopen soon.
Being stuck in Port Lincoln is not exactly hardship. From our caravan we enjoy an amazing view across Spencer Gulf. Port Lincoln boasts some of the finest seafood in Australia and by the size and quality of its fishing fleet it also enjoys some of Australia’s most profitable fishing grounds.
Adjacent to the town is the Port Lincoln National Park with scenery quite unique to any that we have previously seen in Australia. The beauty of the coastline is tinged with a rugged edge. Weather too continues to be extreme as we swelter one day at 41 and the next day rug up when the wind chill makes us feel like it is only 10.
We venture further north to Coffin Bay which provides us with our first glimpse of The Great Australian Bight. Again the coastline is rugged, windswept and just a little bit brutal in its appearance. We cautiously follow a difficult 4WD track to Gallipoli Beach, where the 1981 movie of the same name was filmed. Like its namesake the 250 metre beach is backed by 30 metre limestone bluffs.
While fires ravage Kangaroo Island just off the coast, we are very grateful that this part of Australia is (at the moment) bushfire free. We live in hope that the Eyre Highway will soon be opened so that we can complete our journey across the Nullarbor to Perth. The only alternative route would be to drive 4000kms (including 1500km of dirt road) to Alice Springs and then west to Perth. Amazingly however this road is also blocked, not by fire, but by flooding. You have to love living in Australia!  






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