The beautiful beaches and towns found along South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula coastline are worth travelling halfway across the country.
There’s a sign in a car park beside the Eyre Highway in Kimba reading: ‘Halfway Across Australia’. It’s supposed to indicate the halfway point between Sydney and Perth — a claim that’s arguable, particularly if you happen to live somewhere further west along the highway such as Ceduna. But regardless of its accuracy, for us, Kimba marked the starting point of a road trip following the shoreline of the Eyre Peninsula.
I’d driven across from Melbourne with my wife and teenage son, a journey that took us three days in our motorhome. We could have done it in two, but we were in no rush, having allocated up to three weeks to complete the trip.
In Kimba, we’d found a campsite shaded by eucalypts at the recreation reserve — surely, one of the best free camping facilities in the country — then hopped on our bikes to ride down to the silo art and photograph the Big Galah. A quick stop at Whites Knob Lookout the following morning revealed acres and acres of grainfields all ripe for harvest, ahead of continuing our journey west towards Streaky Bay, the beginning of our coastal odyssey.
RVs free camping at the Kimba Recreation Reserve
The Big Galah outside Kimba's Halfway Across Australia gem shop
Being summer, we planned to focus our efforts on maritime pleasures such as swimming, snorkelling and surfing, rather than spending much time exploring the hinterland farming towns. South Australian summers can be notoriously hot, and we had concerns about suffering through sweltering days and balmy nights prior to leaving home. We needn’t have worried, though. In fact, for a summer beach holiday we ended up experiencing surprisingly few true beach days thanks to persistent southerlies plaguing us throughout our trip.
Sealy season
“Is there a time of year here when the winds settle down?” I ask a waitress more than a week later at Port Lincoln’s Marina Hotel.
“Not really,” she replied. “It’s like this most of the time.”
We’d just stepped off a Calypso Star Charters boat, following an afternoon spent swimming with Australian sea lions — the puppies of the sea. It had been the highlight of our trip and, at a cost of $220 each, easily the most expensive. But how can you put a price on experiences that leave such lasting memories? By the day’s end, the pain of forking out that much money, followed by a bountiful seafood dinner at the hotel, was well and truly forgotten.
For an hour, we had played in the water with adult and juvenile members from a 20-strong colony off Blyth Island, due east of Louth Bay. The stubby ears of some of the more curious sea lions pricked upon hearing our tender rumble towards them, and they poked their heads out of the water resembling aquatic meerkats.
At first, just two ventured close to us — a mother and her pup. Then others waded into the water from their beach lairs. At one point I counted 10 sea lions interacting with us. But the best was saved for last when an energetic pup and I circled each other non-stop for 10 minutes. I was exhausted when we were called back to our boat, but still buzzing about my dance partner hours later.
Funnily enough, it hadn’t been our first encounter with sea lions during our trip. Five days earlier, two had appeared in the water not far from us as we swam off a beach at Walkers Rock, where we’d camped over two nights from New Year’s Eve. I quickly grabbed my dive mask then waded back in. But, while still curious, this pair didn’t linger for long.
Wildlife sightings weren’t restricted to sea lions either. Dolphins had swum beneath us as we strolled along the Coffin Bay Jetty. Emus sauntered through the native scrublands bordering Yangie Campground inside Coffin Bay National Park. And pelicans were frequent companions, often loitering for fish offcuts in places like Farm Beach or Venus Bay.
Emu with chicks, Yangie Bay, Coffin Bay National Park
Pelicans awaiting fish scraps by the Venus Bay Jetty
Water world
Without a doubt, though, it’s the pristine beaches that are the star attractions of any tour through the Eyre Peninsula. Along the untamed west coast, from Streaky Bay down to Coffin Bay, massive waves batter the shoreline, carving out gaping caves and hollowing out swimming holes big enough to wallow in when the tides recede. Savage indents are left behind as the relentless winds and surf howl and surge northwards from the depths of the polar regions.
Funk'd Cafe, Streaky Bay
In between these splintered headlands are sandy morsels of sun-soaked paradise. From Streaky Bay, a fishing and farming town with a distinctive bohemian undercurrent, we savoured the emptiness of Hally’s Beach, near Cape Bauer. As we drove along the Westall Way Loop to the town’s south-west, I salivated over the oceanic swells that brushed up against the lichen-covered boulders at The Granites, and we agreed that the dazzlingly white, powdery sand on Surfers Beach mirrored that ordinarily found along Tasmania’s Bay of Fires or at Waterloo Bay on Wilson’s Promontory.
Murphy's Haystacks near Streaky Bay
After a rare night away from the coast, camping beside 100,000-year-old inselbergs named Murphy’s Haystacks, our walk along the sand at Locks Well, following a thigh-burning 283-step descent, bore more than a passing resemblance to the beach at the foot of the Gibson Steps on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road; all that was missing was the giant sea stacks that help make up the Twelve Apostles. And at Coles Point, my son and I whooped and hollered on our boogie boards as waves wrapped around the headlands and peeled away in glassy perfection.
Stairway to Locks Well Beach
Locks Well Beach
With a 4WD and an offroad caravan or camper trailer, for instance, we’d have been better equipped to explore the further reaches of the Coffin Bay and Lincoln national parks. Instead, we were confined to sealed roads or unsealed roads that were recently graded but which still managed to rattle and shake a few screws loose in the back.
On our first night in Port Lincoln we’d booked a powered site at the excellent Port Lincoln Tourist Park then unloaded our bikes so we could ride into town, past the port and its towering grain silos. For the next two, we saved our pennies by bunking down inside our motorhome at the no-frills Billy Lights Point RV Park, looking across Porter Bay towards millionaire mansions funded by the town’s lucrative seafood, agricultural and tourism industries.
Lincoln Cove Marina, Port Lincoln
Going home
So now we’re on the run home, unsure how far to drive each day as we travel alongside the calm waters of the east coast towards Port Augusta. The winds have settled as we’ve headed north, skirting the Spencer Gulf to Tumby Bay’s silo art. Then by happy coincidence, we arrive in Port Neill on the tiny town’s biggest night of the year.
Revellers at Port Neill's annual Under the Pines festival
After spending all day jumping off the pier with dozens of others, the annual festival known as Under the Pines explodes into life on the grass beneath a row of Norfolk pines opposite the town’s one and only pub. The road outside the Port Neill Hotel’s front door is closed off to motor traffic so revellers can listen to musicians, shop for crafty offerings or fill their boots with an assortment of food and drinks.
The festival is the biggest day of the year for this small town
After dusting off their Sunday-best Wranglers and adding a lick of polish to the trusty RM Williams boots, uteloads of cockies have moseyed into town with high expectations of enjoying a knees-up that’s destined to last until the wee hours. And they’re not disappointed. The headline act is still rocking long after I drift off to bed just before midnight, feeling utterly exhausted.
The festival adds a welcome cultural injection to our peninsula visit and is a last hurrah before our final night camped in an isolated caravan park close to Whyalla Airport. The town betrays its working-class heritage as an export terminal for the country’s first iron ore discoveries and is probably the least ‘beachy’ place we’d come across. The mining continues at a collection of nearby sites, all of them red dirt hills of some sort or another, and all sharing the telltale ‘Iron’ prefix in their name.
Like the town, our best days on the peninsula are now behind us. But then again, we can always turn around.
Port Neill Beach
Travel planner
Getting there:
Port Augusta, the eastern and northern gateway to the Eyre Peninsula, is 300km from Adelaide, 1000km from Melbourne and 1500km from Sydney. Ceduna, the western gateway to the peninsula, is 1900km from Perth.
Woolshed Cave on the Tahlia Caves Road near Elliston
Where to stay:
Free campgrounds are scattered throughout the peninsula, though local councils have introduced a booking system and added fees for some of the more popular camping spots, like Perlubie Beach north of Streaky Bay, or Walkers Rock near Elliston. RV Parks in towns like Port Neill allow free camping for self-contained vehicles for up to 48 hours. Two RV Parks attract nominal fees (bookings essential) in Port Lincoln, and there’s one beside the Streaky Bay Bowls Club and another at the Elliston Golf Course. Kimba allows free camping at the Recreation Reserve with facilities that are unmatched anywhere else on the peninsula. Campsites in Coffin Bay and Lincoln National Parks must be booked through the National Parks and Wildlife Service South Australia website. You’ll find great caravan parks (private and council-owned) in Ceduna, Smoky Bay, Streaky Bay, Venus Bay, Elliston, Coffin Bay, Port Lincoln, North Shields, Tumby Bay, Arno Bay, Cowell and Whyalla.
Clifftop camping at Sheringa Beach
Best time to visit:
Year-round. Temperatures in the Gawler Ranges National Park can be unbearably hot during the summer months, but for beach holidays there’s no better time. Expect windy conditions any time of year.
Further information:
- Eyre Peninsula
- Lower Eyre Council
- South Australia
- National Parks and Wildlife Service South Australia
The Tub on the Tahlia Caves Road near Elliston
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