Last Saturday Michella and I left Adelaide at the early hour of 7.30am to travel to Cape Jaffa. We only decided a few days before that we wanted to go away for the weekend, and apparently every caravan park in SA outside of Cape Jaffa was booked. Anyway, it had pretty much everything we were looking for (proximity to beach, cheap accommodation, solitude), so we went for it.
We stopped off in Kingston for lunch, and ate at the pub. I had salt and pepper squid, and it was pretty ordinairy. The plan was to stay and watch the grand final, but there were too many bogans, so we left for Cape Jaffa.
After settling into our budget cabin, we found our way to the common room to watch the game with everyone else. Most of the other guests were Geelong fans, although there was one quite vocal Port Adelaide fan. The game was obviously terrible, but the people were nice, and shared their food with us, including some delicious chicken wings.
At night we tried to go for a walk, but it was blowing a gale, and raining, so that didn't work out so well. We played a few games of Scrabble, and I won. Michella took it well.
On Sunday we drove into Robe for lunch (Cape Jaffa is basically a caravan park and a few isolated houses). This was a much finer dining experience than we had the day before. We travelled back to the caravan park via a couple of wineries, and picked up a bottle to have with dinner.
After tea we had another game of Scrabble (man this rock and roll life I lead is pretty full on). This time Michella won. She figured she might not do this again, so took a picture of the board to remember the occasion.
The next morning we left for home, stopping in Meningie for lunch. Unfortunately, I experienced a horrible pain in my tooth, which I vowed to fix on my return to Adelaide.
We spent the evening at a get together at Murray and Amanda's house. A couple of the hours from the evening are missing from my memory, but apparently I played Taboo (quite badly I presume) and headbanged to Rage Against the Machine (also, most likely, quite poorly).
Tuesday morning was my one day this week in Adelaide, and I rang the dentist first thing to get my tooth taken care of. It was a crown I had had put in only six months ago, so I was surprised I was feeling pain. The dentist tried to tell me everything was OK to start off with, then he realised the crown had broken and was coming loose. He took it out, and promised to put in a new one for free in a few weeks time.
Wednesday I was again up early, this time at the ungodly hour of 5.30am to take a flight to Ceduna for work.
We got in about 9am, and held our monthly Regional Marketing meeting in the Ceduna council chambers.
When we went to America a couple of years ago, Alen told an airline employee at the Seattle airport that her town was a hole. Whether this is true or not is debatable, but I'm guessing he wouldn't have said this if he had been to Ceduna.
As we drove into the town we passed six or seven indigenous youth walking along the road. Carrying rocks. This is not a town in which I would feel safe.
After the meeting we went to an Aboriginal art gallery. I'm not really a fan of dot painting, in my admittedly non-expert opinion it seems to be one level up from paint by numbers as an art form. So I didn't like this much. After this we had lunch at the Ceduna Hotel, loaded up on booze and drove to Fowlers Bay.
Fowlers Bay is a weird town. It's kind of an outback town, but on the coast. There's a permanent population of 14 people. And the town in surrounded by these really high sand dunes.
Our host Reg took us over the sand dunes in the back of his 4WD, and it was an amazing experience. I couldn't believe that we didn't roll his car, the dunes were so high and so steep. But I suppose he had done this sort of thing before.
We had a barbecue dinner on the beach which was great, and then stayed the night in an apartment.
The next morning we were up relatively early and drove out to the Head of Bight to see the whales.
It was kind of cool, but I'd be lying if I said I was the kind of guy who gets really excited about this kind of stuff. We then drove out to a Nullabor Roadhouse where a couple of my colleagues went on scenic flights, and I leaned against an outside wall for about two hours straight.
The Roadhouse seemed to have a pretty good deal going. They took whatever the normal price was, and doubled it. You want a coffee? Five dollars thanks. Hamburger with the lot? Eleven fifty. Plus it's mainly a cash business so you pay whatever tax you feel like.
After this we drove four hours or so to Streaky Bay, where we stayed the night.
Here was the view from my room in the hotel . . .
We had dinner at a place called Mocean. I had the squid, panfried in garlic butter, with shaved parmesan on top. It was amazing.
Yesterday morning we spent the morning driving around Streaky Bay in a bus, visiting various beaches. They mainly looked the same. We had lunch back in the town, and Matt told me about a local place where we could get a $25 hamburger than was bigger than the plate it came on. Unfortunately they stopped making it earlier this year though so I settled for a schnitzel.
After lunch we did a tour of an Abalone farm, then an Oyster production facility, and I was bored out of my mind.
Finally, we drove back to Ceduna to get our flight home. At 8pm we were about to take off, but the pilot couldn't get the second engine started. At this point I would have been happy to fly with one engine if we could, I just wanted to get home. He turned all the power off, tried again in another ten minutes, and an hour or so later I was dragging my tired body through Adelaide airport.
It's good to be home.
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