Yorke Peninsula

The last time we were in the Yorke Peninsula was about 25 years ago when we spent some time touring here.  Cherryl spent many childhood holidays here because her mother was born at Yorketown and lived and married at Stansbury, where her grandparents lived until the late 1960s.  Her parents met on a blind date while her father lived at Ardrossan - where CHS Smith invented the stump jump  plough.

Enough of the family history.  We're here this time to meet up with friends Jan and Craig Watson who we spent time with at the BOG Muster in Alice Springs.  We'll be spending the next few weeks with them doing some touring and helping them as they move house.  From Wilmington at the top of the Spencers Gulf we drive south to Minlaton about in the middle of the Yorke Peninsula. The Yorke Peninsula is across the Gulf St Vincent from Adelaide.

We met up with Jan and Craig and after a couple of days in Minlaton we set off in convoy on a tour around the boot shaped peninsula.  Minlaton is home to a replica of The Red Devil, the plane flown by Capt. Harry Butler.  While we're in Minlaton we attend a talk at Stansbury Schoolhouse Museum (where Cherryl's mother was a student) by an academic who is researching the Lutheran settlement of the Yorke Peninsula - very interesting, and Cherryl met up with a distant cousin.

Our tour took us to Yorketown, then past the pink lakes to the east coast and Edithburgh and the lighthouse at Troubridge Point.  The pink colour is formed by algae in the lakes.  We made our way around the southern coast where we could see Kangaroo Island.

As we made our way around the coast we stopped off at several lookouts.

Then we headed north to Point Turton where we booked into the caravan park for a couple of days.

The next day we ventured to the tip of the boot and the Innes National Park.  There was plenty to see in the National Park and we were glad we weren't pulling our caravans.  We made our way around the park and stopped off at Inneston, now a ghost town, but which was a chalk and plaster manufacturing area.

After a day wandering around the national park we made our way back to Point Turton.

The next day we made our way north to Port Victoria which has an excellent maritime museum.  The museum is small but has excellent exhibits and is well worth a visit.









While we were waiting for the museum to be opened up (we had called ahead as it would normally be closed on the day we were there) we walked along the jetty.  The water was crystal clear and we could see the sea grass and rocks and some small fish swimming around.

After our visit to the museum we drove further north to Moonta Bay.  More family history here - Cherryls paternal grandparents came from this area.  We had cornish pasties for lunch and wandered around the shops before booking into the Moonta Bay Tourist Park for the night.