Departing Smoky Bay

Smoky Bay beach

It’s funny how a stop over turns out. When we first parked up at Smoky Bay, there was a reluctance to stay the whole weekend as it appeared we were being ‘packed’ in and we have not been used to travelling like that.  However we decided that unless we wanted to drive on, that was going to be our Easter weekend.

On reflection, the weekend in Smoky Bay has been brilliant – sunny blue skies with daytime temperatures around 26C, a full social calendar and the captain has at last got his head around the different way of fishing over here.  Small hooks, small bait and never be surprised at what comes to the surface – he was at last catching fish we could eat. We ended up by staying an extra day.

Rod heading out for a morning on the water

While most of his fishing was done off the long pier from the beach, he was also lucky to score a couple of mornings on the harbour with our ‘next door neighbour’ and his tinny.  Some of the fish we have been feasting on this weekend include Australian sea salmon, tommy rough, snook (they look a little bit like barracuda but are smaller), King George whiting and trevally. He is a happy man at the moment I can assure you.

We leave Smoky Bay tomorrow morning (Tuesday) and make our way toward the township of Ceduna located on the far west coast of South Australia and on the shores of Murat Bay on the Great Australian Bight. The pantry and refrigerator are in need of a top up and we are hoping that the price of diesel will drop after the Easter Weekend break. Prior to Easter, the price rocketed up by 20 cents a litre and has been held there all over the weekend.  We normally pay around $1.60 per litre but it was nearly $1.80 last Thursday.

From Ceduna we will turn right onto the Eyre Highway and slowly make our way back to Port Augusta. The plan is to arrive by about the 27 April which will give us a few days to prepare the van (and ourselves) for the ride up the middle. We hope to depart Port Augusta during the first few days of May.