(Ir)Regular Ramblings - 4

4/3/03 - 13/3/03

Welcome to my fourth rambling. Seems that there has been a few problems with the bulk emails arriving at some peoples door, but not others. As I start this one, I don’t have a clue what or where the problem is, so as yet, don’t have a solution.. Ahh well, if you’re reading this, then I guess the problem has been solved!

The evening (and half the night) of the fourth was spent in the company of four German tourists who insisted we share some wine with them. They had a fair head start on us, having cracked their first beer when they arrived, fresh from the Oodanadatta Track, about 3.00pm. It was their eighth trip to Australia and they have seen more than most Aussies ever will! On their first trip, they followed the old telegraph track up through the centre. They realise now how lucky they were to get through without any problems, being ‘total green-horns” with absolutely no knowledge of the desert or four wheel driving. I was envious of their recent trip along the track, until the told me how much time they had spent digging to extricate their 4WD camper from bogs… made me feel much better! Over one 20km stretch, they bogged their big 4 ton rig numerous times, before eventually becoming bogged to the axles. Luckily they had been saved by a ranger who pulled them out. If they had attempted to drive the track while it was officially closed, they would have been fined - $2000 per wheel!!! That’s the going rate for people who think they know more than the locals. Anyway, it was a good and funny night with plenty of “Prost”, “Cheers” and back-slapping.

The drive from Roxby Downs to Whyalla was (fortunately) uneventful. At one point we stopped for a cuppa at a car park overlooking a huge lake. The water looked magnificent, stretching away, over the horizon. I wondered what it would have looked like a week or two earlier, before the rains. The girls headed off for a bit of exercise and a closer look at the lake – so much for the rains…. The whole thing was nothing but a dry salt lake, that looked for all the world like water… fooled me!

We made sure we skipped ‘Porta Gutta’ (the indigenous pronunciation, apt as it is, for Port Augusta) and continued to Whyalla. The first parking spot we chose for the night proved a bit too attractive to the local ‘rev-heads’ who used the street as a drag strip. We ate dinner, then moved to a car park, we had spied out earlier, near the foreshore. Next morning a car and van parked nearby and the owners related yet another story of people (their brother) being robbed in Port Augusta that morning. That brought to five, the 1st hand stories we had heard about robberies in the caravan parks there. All the tales related to a park that we had looked at when we first arrived in Port Augusta, and had promptly driven out of again as it didn’t feel right. In four of the five cases, the owners had been in their campers or caravans when the indigenous folk entered and took whatever money and handbags they could find. Three occurred during the night (plus two more that happened to others, so 2nd hand tales) and two early in the morning! Most travellers in the parks are very friendly towards fellow travellers, and word (good or bad) spreads quickly. (More on this shortly – see Arno Bay below.)

We collected our ‘forwarded’ mail (thanks Robyn) from the post office and spent most of the day in the public Library so the kids could finish some more school work. While we were there we met some fellow travellers – New Zealanders who have sold up, had a van built here and are travelling around Aus. It was the fourth time we had met them, the first being back in Warrnambool.

They asked where we were staying and said they’d be in that too, so we all stayed in the foreshore car park in Whyalla. There were free BBQ’s, toilets and even a power outlet! The latter was just within reach of my longest extension lead and was put to good use as soon as it was dark (when the cord wasn’t quite so obvious), supplying both vans. Maddie had to do a review on a book or film, so we set the TV up in the outside locker and all sat around watching Shrek in the twilight
Their van is the same size as ours and it must have been a sight, two large vans and 6 mad people, all watching a video in a car-park less than 10 metres from the bay!

One of the letters we had rec’d was from Centrelink telling us Marg had to attend an interview in Morwell 3 days earlier! We visited the local office and were told to ring Morwell and sort it out with them. We told the girl in Morwell that we would be happy to come back for the interview, if they were prepared to fly us back… needless to say, they lost the need to see us.

Arno Bay – an exciting metropolis if ever I saw one…. NOT! Again we stopped for a cuppa and a stroll out along the jetty. The wind was howling but a few brave soles were trying their luck against the local fish… The fish were winning! However, we were told of a tour through the local fish hatchery and decided it was worth staying the night, for the tour next day. We duly booked into the Arno Bay caravan park and advised the owner of our intentions and that the tour wasn’t till 1:30pm the next day. The tour guide would ring the park if she was going to be any earlier, and could the manager please pass the message to us if she rang as otherwise we wouldn’t be clear of there, till about 3:00pm. Anyway to shorten a long story, about 1:00pm next day he was banging on our door demanding more money because we had stayed so long! I errrr wasn’t too happy with his performance and we promptly hitched the van and left, but not before I had great pleasure in going to his office and showing him our road atlas, covered in scrawled notes and arrows showing info passed by many travellers about various places along our route. “This is what travellers do” I told him…. “Word of mouth is a powerful thing” and his business practice was duly noted…

The tour was interesting, with huge Kingfish and Mulloway being bred and fed on shore in tanks, then the fingerlings transported offshore to huge floating rings with appropriately sized nets slung below to finish growing to marketable size. Boats spend all day every day at the rings, feeding the 400,000 fish they are raising. Jess looked in one of the Mulloway breed stock tanks and said “you’ve got a dead fish”. Well, that caused some activity – there was only about 7 fish in the tank, all being about 9 years old and about a metre and a half long. Our guide said the workers would be devastated as they treated the breed stock like babies and become very attached to them.

Next night another freebie, on a council supplied caravan parking area at Tumby Bay. I don’t think they intended us to stay all night, as they have a caravan park not too far away, but no-one complained. The area was only 1 month old, so had new toilets and a tap to fill our tanks. I think the idea is to encourage tourists to stop and spend some money in the town – and it worked. We at least had a counter meal in the pub, even if we didn’t stay in the caravan park.

Our arrival in Port Lincoln completed the worst drive to date, with the incessant wind chewing up our fuel. I really thought Marg was going to have to get out and push, but we made it with approx. 3 litres left in the tank.

It wasn’t without highlights tho’. These ostriches were near the road when we stopped but promptly took ‘flight’. I took off through the paddock doing my best imitation, camera in one hand, the other held high above my bent over body with my fingers and thumb doing as good a job of mimicking their head as possible. I don’t know if they were fooled, but they stopped in awe of the ‘goose’ in the paddock!
An encounter with a local has given us another GREAT day out. We were at the mariner watching a fishing boat return from sea and tie up. We sauntered down and got talking to the skipper, asking the usual sorts of questions… “What do you do? How does it work?” etc. and he asked if we would like to come out for the day! Well, you can guess the answer to that! He duly phoned us a day later and it was arranged – 6:00am departure for the Tuna pens.

The aquaculture industry here has been expanding at a great rate. Abalone, Mussels, Oysters, Whiting, Salmon and Tuna are all being farmed. The Tuna are caught just off the continental shelf and loaded into pens. Each company has a quota – based on the weight of the fish they catch. By catching the Tuna when they are ONLY about 25kg, they get more fish for their quota than they would for the bigger ones. The Tuna pens are then towed back in very slowly (1-3 knots) and are then transferred to other pens near the mainland, fed for 5 – 8 months to fatten them, then harvested and exported primarily to Japan. In the time they are fattened, they put on at least 10kg each.
The company that owned the boat we went out on has about 8 pens, each with between 2000 & 3000 fish. At $3000 - $5500 per fish….. its BIG business!!! Every day, boats go out with pilchards and squid, flown in from Canada or America, to feed the Tuna in the pens. This company flies in about 180 tons a week for the daily feedings.
So… it was dark when we left and we had the pleasure of watching the big orange orb rise above the horizon as daylight dawned. The boat had a crew of four, including the skipper. At each pen, various combinations of squid, pilchards and herring were fed to the Tuna, depending on their dietary requirements.
Frozen two ton blocks, solid with pilchards, were lowered into feeding cages within the pens resulting in a slow release of the pilchards over the next couple of hours as the blocks thawed. Herring are used because they naturally contain something which has a calming or sedative effect, and are fed to the newly caught Tuna until they get used to the pens. The Tuna, built so perfectly for speed, were incredibly fast. The one in the picture below is only about 25kg. and was caught from
a charter boat.
At a distance of 23km out, the pens were all within about a one kilometre area.

Maddie, Jess and I went swimming with them with snorkel and goggles, while they fed. The Tuna flashed below, often turning on their sides to lunge at a nearby pilchard. From the picture below you can see two rings, with us swimming in the middle of the closer one. The further ring had just been used the day before to bring the Tuna in from ‘the shelf’. The nets are stitched together and a hole cut to allow the fish to swim from one to the other. Divers then shepherd the fish while an underwater video camera and recorder is used at the hole to count the precise number of fish. A sample of about 20 is then weighed and the result is used as the figures for their quota.

The photo of the Tuna on the grass was taken at the end of the day at Kirten Point Caravan Park where a group of guys were cutting them up after hooking 18 (but only catching 6) whilst on a charter fishing trip.
Some Tuna follow the nets in from the shelf as they are towed, but it was thought that most of these would have come from a pen that was run into by a government Tug Boat last week – allowing about $1,500,000 of Tuna to escape! That battle is still raging, as naturally the pen owner isn’t too pleased with the loss of his fish!

A drive through the town resulted in a sight I neither Marg nor I had seen before – full sized marijuana plants on a front lawn! Lots of police were in attendance as the house had just been raided and the plants were being put in the back of a Divi’ van. I stopped for a look – all the cops looked at us, so I told them I’d never seen plants like that before… they just grinned.

Port Lincoln really is a town of contrasts, with a lot of it being old houses dating back a hundred or so years… many still proudly sporting their original coat of paint! Then the other end of the spectrum with many very expensive houses. Apparently they have the highest concentration of millionaires in Australia.

Well, that’s the end of number 4… Number 5 will be Coffin Bay national park and then across the Nullarbor; so till then, hope all is well with you all. I think there is currently about 50 on our list, so if you’re wondering why you haven’t had a personalised email… I’m on holidays and haven’t had time!

Love to all,

Marg, Maddy, Jess and Jim.