Pelicans And Sting Rays

Point Turton to Corny Point

We crossed the Yorke Penisula and checked into accommodation in Point Turton, seeking sufficient phone coverage for Roger to work. Point Turton boasted a couple of hundred houses, most of them shuttered and waiting for their absentee owners to visit. The pub was open in theory, but never so when we went past and all the locals gathered at the kiosk/post office/service station to catch up on daily gossip. I left Roger figuring out the delicate balance between back care and work and followed the WTY out of Point Turton: past the jetty and the caravan park, past bush campers tucked into the free cliff top camping, and past the fishing shacks strung out along the shoreline.

The path ducked in and out between clumps of vegetation, with occasional forays out to clifftop lookouts or through sheoak groves where wind soughed in the foliage and my tyres were silent on the sand. Snails clustered in enormous numbers on the fence pickets and on the stalks of wheat stubble in the paddocks, littered the ground and popped under my tyres on the road.

I took a detour to Burner's Beach bush camping area, accessed by a delightful little track wedged in between the cliffs and the sea and inhabited by hardy caravaners and dedicated fishermen. From Burner's Beach the WTY sent hikers back to the beach but I resisted the lure of flat, hard sand, knowing that the headlands were described by hikers as both difficult and precarious. So back to the road I went and it was nice enough, cycling along a gravel road surrounded by wheat.

I saw sheep, which made a welcome break from wheat.

The minute I stopped they all turned their backs and ran away, so all the photographs were of rapidly departing sheep bottoms. Sheep should take lessons from cattle, who always stop to look.

Things got a little dull. Flies fought to get under my fly net, the sun was hot, the wind strengthened to bothersome. I admired the vegetation colours in the salt swamps beside the road and counted down the kilometres.

I rolled into Corny Point happy to be back beside the sea. Corny Point strung itself out along the shore with the usual Caravan Park, old church repurposed to a museum/public building, slightly dowdy playground, and a shuttered community centre. Fishing shacks huddled down on the beach and large tractors lurked in driveways, ready to tow boats in and out across the wide beach when the tide was low.

Down at the boat ramp I waited for my lift home, watched the pelicans, and struck up a conversation with a couple from Adelaide who were staying at the Point Turton Caravan Park and exploring the area by car. We contemplated a man, a boat, a tractor which was surrounded by water, and debated how high the tide needed to rise before the tractor would no longer be operational. Our consensus was that the man was late getting back with the boat, and the tide had risen to the point that the conventional plan of hitching the tractor to the boat and heading back to shore was problematic. Intriguing as this was, none of us stuck around to find out how it all worked out.

My new friends told me that in Point Turton every afternoon at 1630 the eagle rays came in to feed at the jetty and it was possible to paddle or swim amongst them. That was too interesting an opportunity to pass up, so back at Point Turton I took myself off to the jetty at 1630 to see the action. Sure enough, after a bit of waiting and chatting with the other waiting people (all two of them) some eagle rays arrived and swam in slightly disinterested circles around us while a small boy on the jetty above yelled "They killed Steve Irwin you know!" The silly whippersnapper hadn't even been thought of when Steve Irwin died, and neither had the innocent rays, so what would he know?

Back at home I watched the tide rise while the pelicans squabbled over ever-diminishing real estate on the beach and the sun set without fanfare, obliterated by clouds.

Another day was done.

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