Thursday 3rd April, 2014: Exploring the Yorke Peninsula

We decided to stay another night here in Wallaroo and take a daytrip to explore a bit further down the Yorke Peninsula.

It's another overcast day with quite a chilly wind - with temperature around the 20 degrees.

We headed down to Moonta Bay and what a beautiful spot this was. It has a jetty with a swimming enclosure and it is just a sweet little place. We bought a coffee and settled ourselves on the foreshore for a relaxing morning tea.

The villages along this coastline of Spencer Gulf are quite interesting when you realise that many of them are or once were ports for the shipping of grains mainly from the adjacent farmlands. What is amazing is how shallow the waters are close into shore and when the tide goes out you. Have to walk quite some way out to reach the waters edge.

Hopefully the photos help show the beauty of Moonta Bay.

I just had to take a photo of this sign. I would not want to promote vandalism - but it was a funny read all the same.

Whilst we were wandering around the foreshore we started chatting with some people from near Kempsey in NSW. Ruth has taken to just striking up a conversation with anyone around these days!

From here we had a drive into Port Hughes another nice little seaside village and then we headed into Moonta township.

This whole area of the coast is called the "Copper Coast" - as in earlier times it was a big copper mining area. There was an influx of miners from Cornwall who came into the area to work the mines and the area has retained its roots with apparently the largest Cornish festival in the world held here biennially.

Moonta township is a must see also - it has retained many of its original stone buildings from bygone eras - as have many of the towns we have been to in this area of SA. 

Moonta also has a 16km heritage drive which showcases many of its buildings and the mining history of the town.

Here are just a few of the sights along the heritage trail.

After we got back to base camp at "windy" Wallaroo we went for a long walk around the foreshore - where interestingly they allow cars to drive. 

The rest of the late afternoon we spent in the camp kitchen taking advantage of the power points to charge up iPads, phones and cameras - and chatting with other campers utilising this facility.