Yorke Peninsula

Welcome back, been a while between drinks! In this one I take you with us to the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia. 

We visit - 

- Ewen Ponds

- Mount Gambier

- Tantanoola Caves

- Point Turton

- Innes National Park

- Pink Lakes

- Flaherty's beach and more!

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Transcript

Welcome back to Shire travels. In this one I am taking you to the York Peninsula in South Australia. We did this trip in March a couple of years ago and drove from Melbourne and back over 10 days. We decided to drive and take our now old four wheel drive a 100 series land cruiser, as we knew there would be some beach driving we could do. The weather when we went was O K, but it was very windy, much windier than I had expected. If it hadn't been for the wind, there would have been some lovely sunny days, but it was pretty crazy. This was also our first big trip as a family of three, which was very exciting. We stayed in the combination of motels, Air and bees and holiday houses. We didn't consider camping on this trip. We knew that setting up and packing down every day on the days that we were driving there and back was just going to be too much for a little one. We also had so much stuff with this pram, travel court, all the accessories and we just knew that taking camping stuff was just going to make it that bit much harder and we'd be much more comfort of staying in a house. And it's probably a good job we did because if we had tried to camp it would have been really mis brought in a tent with the wind raging. Okay, let's hit the road. We left Melbourne pretty early with the aim to get to Wanham Falls, which is just outside of Hamilton. We stopped there for lunch and we also got some good footage of the waterfalls. This is my first trip taking a drone and my very first time at flying the drone outside and I was absolutely convinced a drone was going to just camikaze into the waterfall and will be gone. but it didn't. We got some nice footage if you want to see it, make sure you check out our YouTube channel travels. After lunch we crossed the border and fortunately with the time difference begins an extra 30 minutes. Now we're in a bit of a rush because we had to get to Ewan Pond for our snorkeling booking. Ewan ponds is this incredible inland snorkeling spot through limestone ponds. The water is filtered and it is incredibly clear. It is crazy. It is actually very cold, so the parkspeople say that you have to wear a wetsuit with the full herd fins, gloves, all the gear. We hide ours from a place called Allendale East General store, which is about a five ten minute drive away from Ewan Ponds. The guy there has a great bill business going, renting out wetsuits and all the gear, and I think for me and Tom it's round about $40 each for us to hire all the gear wasn't cheap, but it's the only rental place in the area, and we just didn't have the space to bring any gear of our own. Now, at first seeing new andwn on overland travelers YouTube channel when they did their first trip around Australia in their old hilarchs, I saw them go there and thought wow, it's amazing. I've got to go. Four years later we did it and it was quite a different experience, so you now have to book a snorkeling time. You also have to pay even though there are absolutely no facilities there. It is a little bit ridiculous. It's gone from being free to now being $16 per adult. You have to have a minimum of two swimmers per booking and you have a one hour time slot that you have to book. Now, this isn't going to be the best option if you are someone spontaneous. You just want to turn up and do it unless you're happy to risk getting a fine yes, apparently rangers do go around and if you don't have a booking or you're not out of the water within your one hour time thought you get fined. Honestly, it is over regulation gone mad, but hey, we were happy to pay it, do it once and just experience it in saying that yes, it is a bit of a process to actually book it all and you have to pay, but it is worth doing once if you're going to be driving through the area. Now, as I mentioned before, you armed to have two swimmers per booking, yes, Tom and I booked together, but we actually swam separately. This was so one of us could wait on land with our little one there was no way that she was going to be getting into the water. She was far too young, and the water was way too cold, so we allocated ourselves at 30 minutes each to swim through the three ponds. This was plenty of time. We took a while. There's a bit of a current that will kind of carry you along there as well through the pond. In terms of swimming ability, look at you're probably not meant to wear life jackets or tape pool noodles with you, but if you had them and you aren't a strong swimmer, it would definitely help. Yes, it also was quite cold and I think the most difficult part is at the very end when you are quite cold, you've got all the gear on. You do have to climb up a small ladder to get onto to a pontoon and it's in the water and it moves around. Now the swimming itself was amazing. It is just unbelievable how clear the water is. The pools that you swim through, there's little channels in between them which go through I guess wres. It looks like when you're stood on the surface, it just says like an old paddock with a few kind of boggy ponds in it, but you go under the surface and it is just incredible. The three ponds that actually incredibly deep I couldn't believe just how deep they were. I think you can actually snorkel there as well if you get all the right permissions, and I think that would be incredible. In between the ponds there are also some channels and they are fairly shallow, although they do recommend not standing up in there just because of the weeds and all those sorts of things. There's also some fish that are in there as well and it really is just an incredible and unique spot snorkel. Now there aren't any facilities there at all. There is a small patch of dirt which they call the car park, but there's no toilets, nowhere to get changed or anything like that. We did see someone bring in a very big caravan and I honestly have no idea how they turned it round. I wouldn't recommend going in there if you are towing. Once we had had our swim and we went back and dropped all our gear off, we then headed to our accommodation in Mount Gambier. We stayed at the blue lake motel, which yet you guessed is fairly near to the blue lake. It was right in town and was actually close to some of the other sites there, which is why we decided to stay there. The accommodation itself, look it was cheap, cheerful, very basic. We just had some dinner and went to bed and that was our day done. It was a really long day of driving. The next day we got up early and we went and explored some Mount Gambia and went to the umpeston sinkole, which was just down the road from accommodation. This was a beautiful little spot just on the outskirts of town. We walked around the edge and then we went down into the sink hole, which was a bit of a mission because we decided to carry our pram all the way down the stairs. We had the place to ourselves for quite a while, which was really cool. despite that I was too nervous to get the drone out, which was a shame because I think I could have got some really cool shots. Anyway we walked round there for a bit. It was really cool being inside the sink hole and seeing the lush green garden that's growing there, and then we made our way to the blue lake. even on a really overcast day you could still tell it was a very steely blue. There are a couple of good spots to stop off if you are in Mount Gambia. Our next place that we were going to was Tantanula caves conservation park, where we were built to go on a tour to one of the caves there. It was only a short tour that maybe went for an hour. We went in there as a group with a couple of guides. one of the reasons I booked this tour was that it was pram friendly, which was ideal. It just meant that we didn't have to worry about carrying round our little one who wasn't quite walking yet, and it also meant because the cave was a little bit cooler, we could just wrap her up in blankets and keep her tucked up in the pram, the cave was really pretty compared to other caves that we had seen in the mug river area. It was quite a bit smaller, but still really stunning and it wanted to check how it were passing through the area. We then started our drive to Victor Harbour and stopped off in Kingston to see the big prawn. We decided to stay in Victor Harbor as we wanted to explore the jetty foreaw area and granite Island, and it just had like a really nice ideal spot to stay. We ended up actually getting completely screwed over by our accommodation that we had booked. We booked a place right near the foreshore. It was a B&B type place with a restaurant bar, all booked online the day before we got there, I got a text to confirm check time, etc. We get there and the girl check is in, can't find our booking says they're fully booked. We show her our texts and our email confirmation. She gets the manager right from the go, it was just used car salesman vibes, very sleazy, kind of trying to dig himself out of a hole. They had obviously sold our room to someone else who was willing to pay more money, and he ended up getting us a room at the local golf club and it was about a t 10 minute drive out of town at this point in the afternoon little one was tired we were hungry and we ended up just going to the golf club and I looked nothing wrong with it at all. It just was not where we wanted to stay. We got to see absolutely none of Victor Harbor and it was incredibly disappointing. We didn't have time to go and explore Victor Harbour in the morning either as we were heading to Adelaide to see some of Tom's family before heading on to the York Peninsula. so we headed into Adelaide. We didn't spend that much time there at all. We just had a bit of morning tea and a playground and then we began the drive down to the York Peninsula, which was really exciting. This was going to be a place where we were staying for five nights and it was going to be great just to set ourselves up in one spot and get to know the area. We stayed in the small town or village of Pointerton. I'd originally thought about staying at the caravan park there, but I'm pretty sure for the time that we wanted to book it was either a five or seven night minimum stay and the price of one of their small units there was just astronomical compared to we could get a four bedroom, two bath, holiday house, two minutes up the road for much cheaper. The house itself that we hired was fine kind of be a classic holiday beach house with basic furnishings, as I said before, four bed, two baths, heaps of room to park the car. for most of the trip we decided to self keep her just to save a bit of money, but we did have one lunch and one dinner at the local pub, which is probably about a five minute walk away. The pub itself was great. It's kind of your standard pub food, much easier than cooking in saying that the hospitality was great and I definitely go back again. Apart from the pub, there isn't that much else in point tertine apart from a small shop with some fuel and a whole load of holiday houses. One of the reasons why I decided to stay there was that we wanted to go to Flatty's beach. This beach it had been voted. I'm pretty sure it was number two best beach in Australia just before we arrived there. As soon as I saw it, I was like yep, we need to go there. You can drive up and park on there. Let's go. In the afternoon we arrived there we headed straight down. I'll drive you on to the beach is very easy. There's entrances at either end and there's also a few entrances in the middle as well. We didn't have to air down or anything. It was incredibly compact. You could probably get on there with an all-wheel drive and be absolutely fine. The beach is huge. It goes on for kilometres. There is so much room to park up there and spend the day. One thing that we left about it is that the water there is incredibly shallow for like hundreds of metres going out to sea. and that leaves all these sand bars and pools of water, which warm up in the sun, makes it ideal for kids to play in. The water's also a really vibrant blue and then goes dark with all the seaweed and it looks amazing. I got the drone up and took a few shots and it just looked incredible. The only thing to watch out for there is that because it is so shallow, the tide only has to rise, I don't know, a few inches and it actually comes in really far and quite quick. So just be aware of that if you are part quite close to the water's edge when the tide is out, just keep watching it in case it does creep up quickly. The next day we decided to explore magazine Bay cave, which is about a two minute drive out of Point Turton. It was a really easy walk down some steps and across a little beach. The cave itself wasn't much to look at. It was utterly full of broken beer bottles and stank of urine. However, I had seen someone else get some nice shots there with a silhette with a camera pointing out the cave, got a couple of pitches and then left just down the road from that we then went to visit natural swimming pool on your maps it's called the swimming center, but don't enough expect him to find an actual swimming pool or swimming center there you will be disappointed. It's a walkway, a concrete walkway out into the ocean and then a ladder to get down into the water and it's apparently where kids used to have their swimming lessons. Look if you got there on a really nice, calm, sunny day. Maybe it would be a nice spot to swim, but for us we just couldn't really see the appeal. We then kept driving down the road and had a quick look at the pines and Corny Point lighthouse. The pines was a nice little community of holiday houses set on a huge beach, like most in the area it was very flat and tidal. It was interesting seeing all the rusty tractors parked in people's driveway as the water is so shallow for almost kilometres heading out to the ocean, they have to get tractors to bring their boats in and out. cornyoint lighthouse again nice enough. It was just extremely windy when we went. We also then had a look at Burners's beach campground, which looked really good. If we would head back again, I think this is somewhere where we wouldide to stay. It had really good beach access and room enough park a few caravans there. We did have spending a bit more time there than we had planned where we hopped out of the car, we could hear a hissing sound and we had got a flat tire, so while Tom repaired there, I just sound the beach with the little one and tried to keep out the wind and soak up a little bit of sun. Another place we decided to go and visit were the pink lakes which are near Yorktown. I think they have a pink lake loop drive that you can do there and it just takes you out to all the different pink lakes and they have different viewing areas. This is where I almost lost the drone. I knew it was a little bit windy, but put it up and tried to get a couple of pitches and it was just gone the winter cold of it and I struggled about 20 minutes trying to get it back in saying that while it was quite stressful, the four seconds of footage that I got of the pink legs did actually look amazing. They were incredibly vibrum. We also did a day trip down to Inis National Park, which was around about 40 minute drive from Pointerton. You do need to buy a park's pass to get in there. They do have an information center where you can get them from or you can get them online. We had a look at Stanhouse Bay jetty, which was very nice and pretty close to the entrance of the national park when you come in. Next you went to Ethelwreck beach lookout to have a look at the wreck which is on the beach there, and we actually saw a huge pod of dolphins playing in the surf, which was incredible. We had never seen so many dolphins before. Tom got some really cool pictures of them jumping and playing in the waves. We also had a look at Kate Spencer lighthouse. Now you can walk all the way out to it, but for us it was just a bit too windy and we just couldn't really be bothered to walk all the way out there. We then had a look at pondaui Bay and decided to head back.uring our drives round we also saw heaps of emus, which was pretty cool. We didn't have a whole lot of time in this national park. The weather wasn't the best and having our little one who couldn't walk, we just couldn't overcommit to carrying her on any really big walks. It's one of those places where if we came back I probably want to try and stay in the national park for maybe two or three nights and just give ourselves a little bit more time to explore it. That evening we decided to walk down to the Pointurton Jesse and see the rays that live there. There's a couple of sting rains and a big bullray that live there, pretty much just hanging out, doing laps, waiting for people to throw them some fish or maybe a bit of squids. If you game enough, you can hop in and have a bit of a swim with them too. There's also a lot of pelicans that hang out on the jetty as well, trying to get a bit of fish. Now as I mentioned before, we did self cater on the trip, we did a really big shop when we were in Adelaide because we knew that on the York Peninsula, there'd be more IGAs rather than the main woolworths and coals. There were a few small shops that we could get groceries. There are a few towns that ought to have dump points, you're in a caravan and there's plenty of places that have fuel as well. The next day we did a bit more exploring and we drove to Belgowan purely to get a few pictures of the car in front of the amazing redcliffs there. You can drive down on to the beach and park up. It's an a huge beach. There isn't that far you can really drive at all. I think really you're only meant to go on there if you're launching a boat, but we just pop down, took a few pictures of the car and then left. We then decided to do the drive just south of Port Victoria on to Waralty Beach and second beach and we drove all the way down to point Rickerby. It was an easy drive, but in saying that, yes, I know I keep saying it. The weather wasn't the best. We didn't decide to go swimming or anything. We just kind of stayed in the car, did a bit of driving. Now this was back in the days when you could camp onorot beach and to be honest, I'm pretty guarded that it's now shut because it was somewhere that we had Earmarked to go back and stay for a few days. The drive itself along the beach was fine. There really wasn't anything too technical. The sand was pretty easy going and getting on and off of the beach as well was absolutely fine. We didn't have any issues at all. The afternoon decided to just Hppet to flatty beach and spent the afternoon there, relaxing and trying not to get blown away. when it was time to head home we planned on getting up really early as we had a long drive all the way back to border town every other day prior to this like clockwork, our little one had woked us up at 6 a m., so we didn't think we needed to set an alarm, but of course, it as the one morning she slept in until 8 a.m. cue the scene from home alone when they are madly dashing round packing for the airport. we left far later than we wanted to and pretty much just drove it the entire day. We stayed in Airbnb near border town, which was just like a small mobile unit someone had on their farm. We got him really late in the evening, grabbed some takeaway for dinner and that was it. next day we just crossed the border and headed home. overall we really like the York Peninsula. I think it's somewhere that you could definitely spend a couple of weeks and really get to see a lot in the area. There are a few main sites that we didn't get to see those places like Munta mines, which has got a lot of attractions that you can do there. There's lots of little towns on the east coast as well that we didn't explore much. And as I said before, we only spent a few hours in the Innes National Park, and ideally, I think you could spend a couple of days there. Now, the York incident isn't really on people's radar where they're doing the big lamp, a lot of people seem to skip it and head to the air peninsula Instead. I think it is definitely worth popping in, having a look at the your peninsula. They do have some beautiful beaches there and lots of good campgrounds, holiday houses, all different places to stay. just be prepared for the fact that it might be a little bit windy. If you want to see any footage of our trip, hop on Instagram and find us at Shireot travels or you can find it on YouTube at Shire travels. Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the next one.