When we went to bed it was about 32oC with not a breeze to
be found, by 3am the van was rocking like a schoolies onsite van with the wind
howling through the trees....ah so this is what the ranger was worried about!
We headed to Cape Jervis to see where the ferry leaves to go
across Kangaroo Island and then headed back along the Western side of the
Fleurieu Peninsula to Normanville.
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| Sam's long locks blowing in the breeze at Cape Jervis |
It is a spectacular part of the coast as the
ocean in met by towering cliffs with small beaches dotted every 10 or 15 kms. We
contemplated having a swim at Normanville but with the wind blowing around 30+
knots the sting of the sand blowing across the beach convinced us out of it.
Instead we had an early lunch and all put our heads down for big nana nap.
About an hour later I woke up in a pool of sweat as while it had been warm the
wind had kept it quite cool but by some miracle it was now still again, and
bloody hot!
I had done some research and there was a beach about 20kms
up the road that had a good snorkeling area with a massive drop off at the edge
of it. Off we went and were pleased to find that Aldinga Beach was one of the South Australia
beaches where you can just drive down and park on the beach. It is a hell of a
lot easier than dragging all of the kid’s boards, flippers, snorkels, bats,
balls, remote control cars and towels down from the car park, all across scorching hot sand!
We
snorkeled out looking for this drop off and gave up after about 100m of clean sandy
bottom. I asked a couple of tradies that were parked beside us and found out it
was a mere 1.2kms of shore....maybe the tourism brochure should have been a
little more explicit!
Aldinga Beach
Regardless the water was cool and refreshing and the boys had a great time building a monster truck track for Jack's remote control track that we attempted to video.....with (a) little success!
Sorry - it is sideways as the camera would only fit into the truck that way!
As the tide rose we
packed up and headed for Port Noralunga our destination for the evening. One of
the problems with being within 50kms of a city (this time being Adelaide) is
that while there are plenty of free camps almost all of them are ‘not
authorised’. We found one on the edge of a river but decided to have a look at
one on the beach hoping that it would be a little cooler. Well, caravans and no
through roads normally don’t get along, but when the car park at the end of it
is completely full due to the local AFL club doing their preseason training,
then they really don’t like each other! With nowhere in particular to be at no particular time we had dinner on the footpath and sat around waiting for everybody to go home. However due to the sun not going down until around 9pm people are still
coming to the beach for a swim at 8:30...PM! Around 9:30 we managed to get
enough space to do the worlds tightest U turn and headed for our river bank
site...that would again be easily cool enough as it was blowing about 20 knots again.
Great pic of the boys on their boards with the rig on the beach in the background champ. McLaren Vale - don't drive past!
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