13th April - 19th April

Monday 13th

It was like a mass exodus this morning, all the people who had arrived for the Easter long weekend packed up and left this morning and by the time I had finished my work and walked outside they were all gone - the place was practically deserted! It was really good though, with the amount of people who were here, we all got on well and made new friends and everyone was friendly and easy-going - it was a great weekend. Our new friends Neil and Mary also left this morning which was quite sad as we got on really well with them - hopefully we will catch up with them again somewhere along the line.

I cooked my whiting on the bbq for lunch - yummy!

Tuesday 14th

Ross had to head into town first thing this morning to take the 4wd in for a service and will probably be gone all day so I spent the morning working, then did some tidying up, washed the clothes and then went hunting for worms and pippis for bait for when I go fishing this afternoon. Boris helped with digging the worms again - still trying to work out whether he is more a hindrance than a help!

Some new people turned up, Waynd and Colleen and John and Elaine and they are really nice and we had a good chat. Wayne and Colleen are first-timers as far as free camping goes - they couldn't have picked a better spot to start!

I went fishing and without Ross here to keep him under control Boris insisted on coming with me and swam around and around and around me and kept trying to grab the fishing line and anything else he could get his teeth on - what a pain! Pretty funny though :) . Wayne and co saw what was happening so called him back for me but I still didn't catch any fish worth keeping.

Wednesday 13th

Man it got windy last night! No idea where it came from but it blew a gale! Ross and I had to scurry out in the middle of the night to batton down the hatches! We were too scared to pull the awning in in case it got away from us so we had to settle for tightening the ropes and putting extra ropes on. Our poor old "pop up" shower copped a hammering so we pulled that down but the rest had to wait till morning.

The wind had settled by this morning and everything managed to survive - phew! We might have to be more careful in future and make sure everything is put away every night in case the wind comes up.

We went out and dug for more worms this morning with John and Elaine while Wayne and Colleen went out for crabs with their new rake they bought in Dublin. We got heaps of worms for a change (with Boris' s help of course) and Wayne and Colleen caught a bunch of crabs - way to go guys!

John and I are the only ones keen enough to get wet to go fishing so we took off a little earlier than we should have (we worked that out once we were already in the water) so we spent a bit of time hunting crabs that were swimming around in the water with us. John managed to snag a crab with his hook on his fishing line so be brought that one in but they are a little hard to catch with just fishing hooks - we reckon you need a net - might try that tomorrow. I took a couple of photos of the crabs under the water - pretty cool! We used the scraps of the crabs that were eaten the night before for burley but we still managed only to catch one whiting (or John caught it) that was of legal size - it was fun though. Maybe all the guys that were here over the Easter long weekend were right and you only get the big ones around the full moon.

We had dinner with "the gang" over at the BBQs and at all the crabs they had caught and had a great night.

Thursday 14th

It was a bit chilly today so nobody went out crabbing or fishing.


This afternoon Elaine and I went in to Dublin to get some grog supplies (very important!), we went in Elaine's car and when we got there she asked me to get her purse out of the back seat - guess what - it wasn't there! She had left it back at the caravan! Never mind, I paid for a box of beer and we will go halves and she will pay me back later. I don't think she will ever live it down though - everyone gave her a hard time when we got back to camp.


Friday 15th

We said goodbye to both Wayne and Colleen and John and Elaine this morning. They are both heading in different directions and we are also packing up and going today, but not really sure where we will end up. We might see them somewhere along the road again - who knows? We have had a great time here but it is time to move on and see what else is out there!

We were just about all packed up ready to go when Margaret and Andrew, a (Scottish?) couple we had talked to about a week ago when they drove in to have a look at the campsite turned up with their caravan and we all started chatting, had a cuppa, etc and by that time it was getting late so we decided to stay another night!! They only live about a half an hour away and didn't know about this campsite so they thought they would come and and camp here for a while to see what it's like. Lovely couple.

Another couple also turned up who seem like they would be good to talk to - closer to our age but they are heading off in the morning so we got their details as they are heading roughly in the same direction as us so we might catch up with them somwhere along the line.

Saturday 16th

Ross took off to try his hand at some crabbing this morning with our new rake we bought. I stayed back to finish off my work and then headed out to join him. We came back and by the time we sorted through them to take out the ones that were too small, we ended up with 15 crabs - not bad for a morning's work! I took the bucket out to take the small ones back (apparently you aren't supposed to do that, you are supposed to sort them as you are collecting them). The water was about a kilometre out by that stage so it was a long walk and I remember being told that the Razor Fish were a long way out so I spent the next hour wallowing around looking for Razor Fish - I managed to stumble over two but that was all - must be doing something wrong!

We started to cook the crabs and realised that we had no idea how long to cook them for so we asked one of the campers who was walking past and he happened to be very knowledgeable about the process and told us exactly how to cook them and for how long - obviously we picked the right guy to ask! He also told me that the Razor Fish are much further out than where I was today - about twice as far - blow that!

The fisheries ranger came around after that and despite what everyone had told us he was very friendly and helpful and even gave us some measuring stick for the crabs. He made sure we knew how to measure them and how to look for the females with eggs.

We decided to go fishing for whiting again tonight but the tide wasn't coming in as far as it had been so it wasn't very deep and it was cold and windy so we gave it up for a bad job after about half an hour and no fish.

Sunday 17th

We are definitely leaving today!! We packed up after I finished working, said our goodbye's to everyone and then headed off to the Yorke Peninsula. We stopped in at Ardrossen for a look as we had been gazing at it across the water for the last two weeks and wanted a closer look. There is a big long jetty going out into the water there are there were hundreds of people fishing off of it! We couldn't believe how busy it was! According to one of our camp books there was a camp site at Tiddy Widdy Beach which is just near there but when we went to have a look we couldn't find it so guessed it was closed. It didn't look like a very inviting place to camp anyway.

It was getting late so we decided to head to Maitland where there is an overnight rest stop with toilets. We thought we could stay there the night and then work out where to go after that. We had a bit of a walk around town and without anything else to do watched a movie and went to bed - not a very exciting town!