Touring the Eyre Peninsula in an RV

We’re off to an underwater orgy of epic proportions. At Stony Point, near Whyalla on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, tens of thousands of giant Australian cuttlefish congregate to copulate. It’s billed as one of the most spectacular marine events in the country and we’re going to snorkel above them as goggled voyeurs. I’m a little concerned about the frigid southern waters, but it turns out I’ll have worse to worry about on the day. 

The Eyre Peninsula is known as the Seafood Frontier, so hubby and I book a motorhome for a road trip from Adelaide. We fly in the night before, and dive into the seafood theme at Vibe Hotel’s inhouse restaurant, Storehouse, with barramundi and Vietnamese salad.  

At Star RV, our Iveco Polaris 6 motorhome looks enormous, but proves easy to drive if we can just avoid low-hanging branches. It’s a true home on wheels, with a kitchen, toilet, shower, and even outdoor furniture in the boot. After provisioning, we drive to Wallaroo Beachfront Tourist Park on the Yorke Peninsula. It’s next door to the ferry that will transport us across the Spencer Gulf to the Eyre Peninsula in the morning.  

After copper was discovered in 1859, Wallaroo became SA’s second busiest port and the Heritage and Nautical Museum tells its story. Nowadays, the Bond Store is a swanky micro-brewery and distillery owned by Italian couple Andrea and Elisa, where we try a gin flight and beer paddle. At dinner at the Weeroona Hotel, proprietor Lee-Anne asks, “Are you the lady that drove the big RV into town?” It seems the motorhome’s eye-catching coastal livery attracts attention. 

Ferry to Lucky Bay

The ferry to Lucky Bay takes 2.5 hours and from here we drive west through Kimba. As the crow flies, Kimba is halfway across Australia, though it’s a giant pink galah that greets travellers, along with a beguiling image of a young girl in a wheat field, painted on the town’s silos.  

The big galah at Kimba. Photo © Briar Jensen.

Viterra silos signify each settlement along the Eyre Highway as is carves through grain country that produces around 45 per cent of SA’s wheat. Vast fields make Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat paddocks look piddly squat. A patchwork of wheat stubble, tilled soil and dry dirt renders the landscape 50 shades of fallow brown, aggravated by drought.  

At Wudinna (pronounced Wood-na), the challenges of rural living are portrayed in the eight-metre-high Australian Farmer sculpture, an elegant granite monolith by Marijan Bekic that took two years to carve. 

The rutted, un-graded gravel road to the campsite in Gawler Ranges National Park is brutal in the RV and we’re forced to shout over the cacophony of clanging cutlery. When milk spills in the fridge and cascades out along the floor, we’ve had enough and decide to backtrack to Wudinna RV Park at the showgrounds.  

We continue west in the morning to Pildappa Rock, an enormous inselberg with a wave-like base and a moonscape of craters on top. Dry now, they were natural water reservoirs for the local Indigenous people and early settlers, who channelled the runoff.  

Streaky Bay

After parched paddocks, Streaky Bay’s ocean blues are a balm to our spirits, and we score a beachfront site at Discovery Parks Streaky Bay. Cormorants, pelicans and dolphins glide across Doctors Beach as a fisherman reels in a fiddler ray. A foreshore path leads into the town’s 340-metre-long jetty, built in 1914, overlooked by the pub and waterfront restaurant, Drift.  

Like a hermit crab, our home comes with us on a daytrip to Baird Bay, about 50km south. At Baird Bay Experience, Kat and Brendan kit out guests with wet suits and snorkels before skimming us across the glassy, shallow bay in a runabout. When dolphins arrive, we slip intpollo the frigid water where they zip around and spin to eyeball us, before deciding we’re dull, and zooming away.  

Australian sea lion on Jones Island. Photo © Briar Jensen.

Brendan anchors off Jones Island, home to hundreds of seabirds and a colony of Australian sea lions. Three females gambol over to swim with us, peering into our faces with inquisitive eyes. Their adorable puppy-dog whiskers warm my heart, if not my extremities. Kat says they’re pregnant and they nuzzle each other while resting on the sandy bottom.  

Back at Streaky Bay we buy oysters and local King George whiting from Streaky Bay Marine Products to cook for dinner. I wake to windy weather and a stuffy head cold.  

Beachfront spot at Discovery Parks Streaky Bay. Photo © Briar Jensen.

Murphy's Haystacks

Heading southeast along the Flinders Highway, we detour to Murphy’s Haystacks, apparently named after a visiting Scottish agricultural ‘expert’ mistook the 1500-million-year-old rocks for stacks of hay produced by the surrounding property’s owner, Denis Murphy. The weathered granite outcrops are reminiscent of Stonehenge, albeit more spread out, with shapelier silhouettes. I buy a jar of mallee honey by the gate, and further along the highway, wood-fired fruit buns at the cute Colton Bakehouse honesty stall.  

Murphy's Haystacks. Photo © Briar Jensen.

At Walkers Rock campsite, dunes block the onshore winds, and we have a lazy afternoon. Following dinner around the fire, we rug up to lie on the beach and gaze at the infinity of stars undiminished by light pollution. 

From here it’s on to Coffin Bay, named by Mathew Flinders in honour of Sir Issac Coffin. This hamlet of 650 people sits on the edge of a sheltered waterway that’s every shade of aquamarine. It’s renowned for oysters, originally native angasi, until they were fished out, and now Pacific oysters after they were introduced in 1969. 

We have two nights at Discovery Parks Coffin Bay, across the road from Oyster HQ, a waterfront bar and restaurant, with an oyster vending machine for those in a hurry. Hubby is in heaven, with beer and oysters for afternoon tea, and seafood platters for dinner, washed down with a Peter Teakle Riesling, aptly named Killer White. 

Platter at Oyster HQ. Photo © Briar Jensen.

“Coffin Bay oysters grow faster and taste better,” says ex-fisherman Scotty, on a boat-tour with Experience Coffin Bay, “It’s due to the clear, nutrient-rich water that’s free of contaminants from industry, big shipping and farming, as no major rivers run into the bay.” Inclement weather thwarts wading amongst the oyster beds, but not eating freshly shucked ones.  

Experience Coffin Bay guide Scotty. Photo © Briar Jensen.

With puffer jackets zipped we take the Oyster Walk along Kellidie Bay. Kangaroos graze on park lawns and emus hang out at the yacht club. Clouds colour the bay turbid teal, but the water beneath the boardwalk is magnifying-glass clear.  

Warm and cosy 1802 Oyster Bar recently won a Good Food Guide Readers’ Choice Award, a fantastic achievement for Clare and Andy who bought the place just before COVID. Our Seafood Experience dinner brings plate after plate of innovatively prepared and presented dishes including kingfish crudo and barbequed Spencer Gulf prawns.  

The next day we join Kane on a Wild Yarnbala Tour. “This she-oak woodland was slated for residential development,” he says, as we walk through the endangered ecosystem that he and his family have turned into a nature reserve. He hands out wattle seeds and quandong skin, to taste, and tells us about the vulnerable western pygmy possum, before getting us to try water divining. Sceptical, we smile incredulously when the divining rods swivel wilfully in our hands. We finish with a Coffin Bay gin around the firepit, as Kane plays the didgeridoo and lap-steel guitar, sounds that seem borne from the bush.  

Coffin Bay National Park

Coastal scrub gives way to Southern Ocean views on the drive into Coffin Bay National Park. Rolling surf scours limestone cliffs and Point Avoid overlooks a frenzy of white water to Golden Island. Our campsite is on the sheltered side of this hammerhead peninsula, at Yangie Bay, surrounded by flowering coastal velvet bush and cockies tongue. We walk up Yangie Hill for panoramic views over the saltmarsh sanctuary, have sunset drinks around the firepit, wake to mist over the water, and eat breakfast with willie wagtails and wattlebirds. 

Across the Eyre’s tip, at Surfleet Cove in Lincoln National Park, we have the beach to ourselves, but it’s windy and fires are prohibited. Next stop is Port Lincoln Tourist Park, and with only a day here, we catch a taxi to Peter Teakle winery. Its tasting room resembles a giant wine barrel, but we head to Line & Label restaurant for a long lunch, which regrettably doesn’t leave time to visit West Coast Distilling Co.’s gin bar in town. 

Travelling north along the Spencer Gulf coast, we view the silo art at Tumby Bay and stretch the legs on the Arno Bay Boardwalk, where swathes of samphire plants in shades of pink, pearl and pinot cover the ground like a Persian carpet. These small towns deserve more time than we have. 

Arriving at Point Gibbon beachfront campsite, we wish we’d booked two nights. On the point of a sweeping beach, sand dunes slope down to garnet-coloured rocks where sea lions are said to haul out. Beach walks offer up a collage of coloured seaweed, myriad cuttlefish bones, and desiccated puffer fish.  

The next day we head through Cowell to the steel port of Whyalla, which feels like the big smoke. A drive up Hummock Hill gives 360-degree views over the township, steel works, harbour, and circular jetty. The Maritime Museum, home to HMAS Whyalla, the first Bathurst-class minesweeper built by BHP, includes a natural history gallery on the region’s marine environment. 

HMAS Whyalla at the Maritime Museum. Photo © Briar Jensen

We come and go from Discovery Parks Whyalla Foreshore to the cuttlefish breeding site at Stony Point, a 30-minute drive away. The morning of our snorkel, I wake early with a horridly upset stomach. I panic, take Imodium, contemplate cancelling, take more Imodium.  

At Whyalla Diving Services in town, we’re dressed in two layers of wet suits and booties. There’s no getting out of these by myself, let alone in a hurry. More panic, more Imodium. Like seals out of water we waddle ungainly up the street to our motorhome – yes, all snorkellers drive themselves to Stony Point dressed like cat burglars. It’d be funny if I wasn’t frantic. At least our van has a toilet, and shower, should the worst happen.  

Stony Point

Stony Point is aptly named. Precariously balanced pancake-flat rocks lead into a shallow bay beside the Santos gas fractionation plant. Donning gloves, hooded vests and snorkels we follow guide Romy into the 14-degree water.  

I spot cuttlefish immediately, dozens of them, in only a metre or two of water. Their mantles, outlined in neon turquoise, undulate like flouncy frills as they hover over the sea grass. Chameleon-like they change colour and texture to camouflage themselves or show off.  

A giant cuttlefish at Stony Point. Credit Carl Charter.

Females are vastly outnumbered by males, who inflate their 60cm bodies and elongate their eight arms to intimidate competitors. Smaller males resort to cross-dressing skulduggery, imitating females to sneak in under bigger rivals to do the deed. I spot one couple head-to-head, tentacles locked in the mating embrace. It’s like watching the Discovery Channel.  

I don’t witness the pulsating psychedelic colours I’ve seen online, perhaps that comes later in the season when the competition is fiercer (and the water is five degrees colder), but I do spot Southern eagle rays. 

After 45 minutes we’re freezing. While the rest of our group heads to the changerooms, we shuffle to our motorhome, peel each other of neoprene, and thaw out under a blissfully hot shower. Thanks to modern medicine, I return an unsoiled wetsuit. 

The following day, we float above the cuttlefish, on a glass bottom boat tour with Cuttys. Owner Matt, an ex-fisherman who never lets the truth get in the way of a good story, says no one knows where the cuttlefish come from, just that the flat rocks offer excellent protection for their eggs. He explains they have three hearts and blue blood, but only live for one to two years, and die after mating.  

As we head back to Adelaide via Port Augusta, I realise all those cuttlebones on the beach at Point Gibbon were the aftermath of an impassioned shag-fest, much like the one to which we’ve just been privy.  

MORE INFORMATION 

Star RV | starrv.com/au  

Baird Bay Experience | bairdbay.com 

Whyalla Diving Services | whyalladivingservices.com.au  

Cuttys Glass Bottom Boat Tours | cuttys.au 

Discovery Holiday Parks | discoveryholidayparks.com.au  

Experience Coffin Bay | experiencecoffinbay.com.au  

Wild Yarnbala Tour | yarnbala.com/wild-yarnbala  

Vibe Hotel Adelaide | vibehotels.com