From My Notebooks In 1976: Still edging along Australia’s south coast towards the Nullarbor

March 19th to 26th, Adelaide

Our hosts John and Judith Brine were academics who enjoyed our company, as we did theirs, and they looked after us for a week while we explored the city. There was plenty to see but I made only one short note.

Visit to Art Gallery. A quiet mood. Aboriginal bark paintings. The Pleiades and Orion in a T and Oval shape respectively. Some good Australian landscapes, by H.J. Johnstone, John Glover, Heysen, Walter Withers (all 19th Cent.) Some Dutch – a cavalry battle, bulbous white horse glistening like swollen intestines.

Adelaide is the last big city on the south coast before getting to the other side. We set out on:

March 27th and 28th to Laura and Wilpena

Averaging 63 mpg. Spoke gone in the morning. Very brown flat land. Grain silos and sheep trains drawn up at sidings. Big grey and white gums. 50 miles between towns going towards Flinders Range. Melrose seemed a pretty town, just beyond us last night. Hawker was a surprise, but is a tourist outpost, with two grandiose hotels, one now derelict (Grand Junction and Royal) – or were they in Quorn? Will check today. Took wrong road from Hawker for a few miles – under construction. Then 30 miles to Wilpena Pound Nat. Park. Shop. Wine. Stew. Galahs. Sweet-smelling pines and gums. Roseate sky. Walk in the Pound. Kangaroos and babies. Fine woods. Derelict house with graffiti.

March 29th, from Wilpena

Hard ride back to Quorn (Grand Junction Hotel).

[The hotels were in Quorn after all.]

Port Augusta power station, all in smog. Amazing in all this space to see small town in smog. On to Whyallah. Turns out to be a steel foundry (BHP) and almost nothing else. Next pt. on coast is Cowell, another 64 miles. Long ride and turn off on a whim to Lucky Bay. Dirt road. Little row of holiday houses on the coast. Great heaps of sea grass on the beach. Little sign of life. Bed down behind some scrub bushes in the white sand. Grilled steaks, cabbage and potatoes. Perfect bed with net cover.

March 30th

Up with the sun. A man put his gill net out and caught a dozen whiting in half an hour. Gave us two for breakfast. Delicious. On to Port Lincoln. To Cowell, to sharpen knife at butchers. Stopped first at Port Arno where found a man who sold cockles. Then decided to move more slowly round the coast and really do the fishing seriously. So turned off at Port Neill. Quiet holiday resort., Two adjoining bays, one with long jetty. Houses all locked up, likewise caravans, pretty green park, with attendant Scotsman and white tomcat. Spent the rest of the afternoon fishing off beach in rough water but no sign of anything. So went over to jetty towards sundown. Felt a few knocks on the line, but nothing much. Tried the silver lure, but still nought. The Scotsman told Carol there were no whiting here. Only a few Toms – or Tommy Ruffs – which are a small herring-like fish with yellow dashes on their sides.

Somewhere near Venus Bay

March 31st, Wednesday

600 miles from Adelaide and two thirds of a pint of oil gone.

First thing after love, i.e. at 7am, to jetty to try again. In first light sea is beautifully illuminated. Can see bait on the bottom (sand among the grass) and also the Toms swishing about. Gradually I learn where they’ll pick it up – i.e, floating and in motion about halfway down and so, painfully slowly over a period of three hours catch four little Toms, and lose two off the hook. But it’s a beginning, and they make a breakfast. We had just finished eating when a young man came to ask if we’d help move some furniture.

“There’s five bucks in it!”

“Not half!!”

The furniture is made of cardboard and is moving into a plasterboard house. Job takes fifteen minutes. Lucky Country.

From Port Neill to Lincoln, long and straight. Huge granary, grain loader, rail head. Spent winnings on a cask of Coolabah and tied plastic bottle on the back. Took wrong road to Coffin Bay but came back to it after eight miles. Big bush fire filled sky with fiery smoke. Sparse, dry country. Scrub. Brown sheep. Coffin Bay, three miles of road, a small town with lots of holiday houses spreading from it. Jetty and series of interconnected bays. We camped on a beach beyond houses on dirt road. Shallow cockle bay. Towards evening, Andy Spiers, the new ranger for the newer Yangie Reserve drove up with wife Helen and three children, and a surf boat. They later invited us to lunch the following day. We had a beautiful night under the net. Went cockling in the morning.

Thursday, April 1st

Caught a sprat from the jetty. Rain clouds formed. Lunch with Andy and Helen. Then rode through the reserve to Avoid Bay, to catch a big one off the rocks. It took the tail off my bait. Then I lost bait hook and sinker in rocks, twice, and cut my foot trying to retrieve them. Stone is volcanic, sharp and friable. Back to Andy’s at night. Listened to his tapes. Then home to tent.

Friday, April 2nd

Weather still cool and damp. Went on to Venus Bay with four lamb chops. Camped on bluff overlooking most rugged coast. With mile-long rollers breaking on rocks. Took pics. Made good fire, in spite of strong wind and had lovely meat and sautéd potatoes. Very warm and comfortable behind bush.

April 3rd

From Venus Bay to Ceduna. Through fifty miles of bad dirt road. Then good road. Said caretaker at Venus (his wife feeds the pelicans, 24 of them) it’s what the Nullarbor is like when it’s bad.

[Ever since Melbourne we were haunted by the prospect of the Nullarbor road, three or four hundred miles of it, across the huge waterless wasteland that divides the south of Australia.]

To Streaky Bay. The café with the couple dressed up in little white numbers – like McDonald’s. Nothing again for 70 miles. Then André’s Garage [in Ceduna] and invitations from A. for dinner. Wife Helga from Munich – the ultimate “Level Gaze” as Carol put it. Children Bernard and Andrew.

[Next weekend I will be at the Touratech travellers’ meeting in the Black Forest, where they want to put me on the stage and make a fuss of me, so there probably won’t be another episode that Sunday. The following weekend, still in Ceduna, and André’s strange story.]