Tag: caravans

We must be rather slow on the uptake, for we are only now beginning to perceive that few people our age go travelling around Australia with just a car and a tent. Most of them have large and expensive rigs: huge caravans, powerful cars and a host of accessories such as baby Hills Hoist clotheslines, satellite dishes on their vans, and complex annexes. Some of them hang bikes on the front of their vans or even carry boats atop their cars. Yet in our naivety we had believed we were choosing luxurious options when we bought a tent we could stand up in and stretcher beds that would permit us to sleep above the ground!

In fact, when we left home, I thought that our car was absurdly full. I now realise that we are travelling relatively light, despite all the bits and bobs we’ve brought along. I am not sure whether to be pleased by the simplicity of our expedition or embarrassed when someone in a campground says, with a certain condescension, “Oh, you’re the ones in that little tent.”

Fortunately, our pitiful equipment doesn’t preclude us from enjoying all the sights. The Arid Lands Botanical Gardens north of Port Augusta were an introduction to the beauty to be found in a drier world. We spent a happy two hours admiring the “desert-loving” plants that have adapted to this ecosystem so gracefully and colourfully. The plants that I might once have written off as mere “tussocks” gained status here as survivors in a challenging environment. Some plant foods were also offered in the café, where we tried out wattleseed damper and various ice creams flavoured with native foods such as quandong and native lime. The lemon myrtle flavour was our favourite.

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The gardens were set out according to regions, so we could easily encounter plants from the Eyre Peninsula, the Victoria Desert, the West Coast Mallee and other areas. We could also begin to accustom ourselves to the red sand that would later cling to our feet and to the tent floor when we stopped overnight in a  tiny, rudimentary camping ground in Tumby Bay. It was run by the CWA and featured, oddly enough, locked private bathrooms but no kitchen.

At the Islands Caravan Park in Streaky Bay, considered by many to be one of Australia’s best, we seemed to have one of the only tents in the place. Perhaps because the South Australian holidays were almost over, there were fewer young families there and many more grey nomads in giant mobile homes with numerous embellishments. It was like a Boomers’ Convention. They had Happy Hour each day at 5pm and seemed to be having a wonderful time.

Meanwhile, we discovered a breathtaking length of coastline in the area around Streaky Bay. It was just as spectacular as the coast along the Great Ocean Road and even included some rocky islands that could easily have been labelled apostles. At the “blowholes” and “whistling rocks” on Cape Bauer, the  sea water struck the rocks with a roar and then hissed upwards through naturally eroded pipes in the limestone cliffs. The sea changed colour from turquoise to aqua to dove grey, depending on the changeable weather: it was dazzling in all its manifestations.