March 12 – Coffin Bay NP

We packed up camp on Monday morning but took it easy to let the public holiday crowds depart. We were only doing a short drive across the peninsular to Coffin Bay. We thought we would have been and gone through here by now but, again, the public holiday busyness caught us off guard and we were arriving knowing most campgrounds would be relatively quiet.

A brief tour around the town of Coffin Bay first and then we headed out through the National Park. Yangie campground was an easy 2WD option but, against Amy’s preference we decided to drive on past the 4WD-only sign and work our way up the track to Black Springs. We let about 10psi or so out of the tyres – down to around the 25psi mark – and headed off. Straight away we were into the loose boggy sand and Amy had her hands full – not so much having any issues with getting through – but more concerned about what would happen when someone came the other way on the narrow one-lane track. Any loss of momentum and in many places you sank quick – especially when we were heavy with a full load of water and full tank of fuel. Luckily we only passed one car and we had enough warning to get wide enough for them to get past. Most of the track was just sand driving – a bit like Fraser Island which we’ve bashed a hilux around before – and a few rock sections were just go-slow spots.

We arrived at the campground – only 8 sites and three had also been booked. Sites 1 and 2 were a couple of older blokes with pretty flash camper trailer set-ups who we had camped near a few nights back. From their base-camp here they were going to just take one car further out the peninsular track tomorrow so they had it prepared with maxx trax ready and a tall sand flag. It’s a 6 hour return trip to get to the end of the track and we decided this was as far as we were going! The site closest to us was a family with three kids who were just having a few weeks off work from Adelaide. The sites had awesome views out across the water and the beach was great for exploring.

We collected some mussels off the rocks to see how they would cook up – again – another feast – this time some garlic in there. Unfortunately the bees were a problem – the dry conditions make them swarm around any water they can detect. Even the kangaroos came up and were drinking any water they could find – they didnt even mind that it was the washing up bucket!. A flock of silvereyes also made the most of the water soaking in the frypan which turned into a makeshift bird bath.