Cyclone Randy is still following me

I am in Coffin Bay on the Eyre Peninsular and guess what - it has started to rain.  I drove down from Venus Bay this morning and watched the clouds dumping rain out in the ocean heading in this direction.  The sight was wonderful, big banks of clouds, rainbows, great drifts of heavy rain in different directions but I was on dry road.  I got myself set up in the caravan park here after having a delicious lunch of King George whiting, chips and salad at a restaurant on the foreshore called the Oysterbeds and the view from that was indeed of the oyster beds for which this place is known.  No sooner had I put up my pop top and opened everything up to let the breeze in and it started to rain and hasn't stopped since.  The humidity is about 100%.  Having had a real shower, I am still dripping water.

Apart from the weather display the drive down was enjoyable.  Very dry stony white limestone soil, would have been very difficult for the early settlers to scratch a living.  Probably not so easy today, looking at the dry crop stubble on the undulating hills.  Along the way, there was lots of evidence of dry stone walling.  In most places, farmers had replaced it with modern fencing but left the remnants there.  In one place the walls were almost still intact.  I did take a photo.

Not quite the pristine standard of Ireland or the South West counties of England, but still standing when not much else is.

More dramatic cliffs with raging ocean beneath. One place I stopped was noted as a memorial to a fisherman in the early 70's who was lost when his boat crashed on the rocks - two crew with him managed to get ashore.  This was that spot.

Venus Bay is a very dedicated fishing place.  I was able to scoop a bay in the caravan park only as someone phoned to say they had vehicle trouble and needed to cancel that night.  The park was jammed with the hugest rigs I have ever seen.  I didnt have to worry about looking for shade (there wasnt any) but in any event the height and length of the vans swamped me and kept me in the shade for all but a couple of hours in the mid day.  I tried to show how much of a tiddler I was by comparison, but I should have put the pop down first.  This vehicle had another ten feet in front of my van.  The kitchen was the bit that hung out the side next to me.  I gathered that the people who stay there come for weeks and sometimes months on end for the fishing.  I overheard the neighbour in the row behind ask his wife when she returned with a bucket, "How may crabs did you get?"  She said "Only 25".  I was shocked, dont they have bag limits here?

On my way to Venus Bay I went passed a group of huge granite boulders rising out of a cropped field.  They were called Murphy's Haystacks.  Enormous, cant quite get the scale here.

Tomorrow on through Port Lincoln to who knows where.....