15th – 19th May

Our stay at Stansbury has been a very interesting one.  We have met some very friendly people.  I thought Queenslanders were the friendliest but South Australians are right up there.  We have been approached by so many asking about the floods and cyclone in Queensland and whether we had been impacted.  Caravaners never ask you about your employment or your history. One is just accepted as we are.  In my experience it is unique.

We have had some great weather and some terrible weather with gale force winds that blew all night.  One night we were up at 1:00am trying to secure our awning in high wind.

Yorke Peninsula is beautiful country mostly made up of wheat and sheep farming.  The east coast is very flat with few hills at all while the west side does rise to about 200 metres as one travels further north.  There are some beautiful stretches of coast line with sharp cliffs (approx 30m high) falling into the sea.  The soil is mainly a limestone type material and it is not strong so cliffs are regularly undercut by the sea leaving some spectacular scenery.

We spent one day visiting Innes National Park which covers the very southern foot of the peninsula.  It is amazing country.  One visitor we spoke to likened it favourably to the Twelve Apostles and we can understand his comparison. 

Chinamans Hat Island



The welcome view to the park coast



 The national park was initially a gypsum mine site.  The gypsum was shipped throughout SA for the building industry.  There are relics of the mining settlement that have been turned into holiday accommodation and one can see the foundations for some of the pipelines and conveyors as you move around the area.  There is also an old pier which was used to load ships with the product.

There are two lighthouses in the park, one on man land & another on an island.  Emus can be seen close to the road and also some of the biggest kangaroos we have seen in coastal areas.

Just south of Stansbury on the east coast are three small villages, Wool Bay, Port Giles & Edithburgh.  These are all only a few Klms apart.  Wool Bay has relics of some early lime smelters which date back to early 1900s.  Port Giles has very large wheat handling facility and loads ships for export and Edithburgh is a small fishing and holiday village.  It has a wind farm close by and I am sure they certainly generated some megawatts while we were there.

Old lime smelter at Wool Bay.  See Port Giles in background.

Grain Handling Facility at Port Giles (about 30% of it)

On the west coast we visited Port Victoria.  There are several large islands off shore here and fishing and diving attract many people to this beautiful area.  We arrived here late in the afternoon and the setting sun very much limited us obtaining a real picture of the beauty of this coast.  All of these towns are made up of significant number of holiday homes and almost every caravan park has large numbers of vans in storage.  Yorke really is the holiday area for Adelaide people.

Port Victoria

 Finally we left Stansbury and headed for Port Augusta.  We travelled up the centre of the peninsula through more grazing and wheat country and passing by Port Pirie.  Our visit to Yorke really was an amazing time but in the end we were glad to get away from the wind and cold.