02/10/21 Ticklebelly Hill: Cowell to Elliston

"Enjoy your day!" S was chirpy today at breakfast in the camp kitchen. We were pretty chuffed too, having survived the night without frostbite and with the BoM promising warm(ish) weather until at least 6pm.  We filled our thermos and sallied forth into the wild midlands of the Eyre Peninsula, heading west. 

Goyder Line markers came and went and the wheat fields ebbed and flowed. The most prevalent crop was rocks, to the point of there being drystone walls in the paddocks and if that doesn't speak of too many rocks I don't know what does.

We had smoko at Cleve which was a cute little town doing its best to make itself unpleasant by blaring pop music from speakers in the main Street.

 

The music didn't bother us because we had smoko up at Ticklebelly Hill, which is the best name ever for a hill.  Back in WWII Ticklebelly Hill had a 24-hour lookout for enemy aircraft which, given Ticklebelly Hill's location, had to be the most mind numbingly boring duty rotation as no enemy aircraft had the range to fly there without first taking a ship on a tedious journey all around Australia past multiple juicier (and closer) targets.

 

Roger made a friend.  This is Bonnie, who graces the (noisy) main street of Cleve.  The sculptor has placed a long plaque which basically says that Bonnie has no particular relevance to Cleve, he just likes making metal horses and named her Bonnie because he named the first metal horse Clyde (for Clydsdale) and he'll continue making metal horses until he doesn't like doing it any more, thank you very much. Cleve may end up with a herd.

We had lunch at Lock, where we learnt all about lumpers.  

 

Lumpers carried the 85kg wheat (or 67kg barley) bags at all the grain yards and ports.  The lumpers were expected to lump  up to 3000-5000 bags/day loading railway trucks, or 2000ish/day stacking from farmers trucks. It's not clear if those numbers were per lumper (almost impossible) or per team but either way that's a lot of lumping!

 While we were there we were entertained by motorbikes pouring into town. By the time we finished lunch at least 50 had arrived at the sports ground and another 20 were congregating at the pub. Some were free-ranging around the streets looking obviously lost and their not-lost fellows were beeping horns to get their attention and shouting out to tell them where to go. Some just blasted through town (probably blinked at the wrong time) and had to be chased down and escorted to the correct place. Given the age of the bikers it was disturbingly like a mobility scooter convention on steroids, just noisier and probably with a lot more cash.

 

The water pipeline follows the Birdseye Highway between Lock and Elliston, and this is on the water pipeline. 

 

Once in Elliston we found the Waterloo Bay CP which has, among other things, a jumping pillow to meet the bouncing needs of its clientele. This means that time spent in the camp kitchen is set to a backdrop of squeals, shouts, random children's heads floating in and out of view in the window, and parents sitting around providing supervision with varying degrees of enthusiasm.  We'd have loved to have a go on the jumping pillow ourselves but felt it may not be kosher for us to jump on with the kiddies, so we went for a walk on the beach and to the jetty instead.

Unlike the water on the other side of the peninsula, this water is part of the Southern Ocean, and has shades of Antarctica.  There is no way we'll be swimming.

The jetty is long and was once used for getting wheat to market.  It isn't used for anything  much now but is heritage listed and managed jointly by the local council and the SA government.  We walked to the end.

Once we'd walked to the end, we looked down and saw this.  These are the 'new' piers because the old wooden piers are rotted through.  My resident engineer was horrified by this and looked closer, noticing that many of the horizontal bracing supports just don't exist any more.  Then we walked very quickly back to land and the resident engineer isn't going anywhere near the jetty ever again.

Look closely at those piers.

Feet firmly on the land, we settled in for a mediocre sunset, made much less mediocre by a pod of dolphins which swam past us and into the bay.

There's dolphins in there.  And rain is coming.

Waterloo bay, with the wheat silos catching the last of the sun.

It's started raining and the wind is howling. The BOM predicts (according to those who continue to have a ridiculous and touching faith in such things) a precipitous drop in temperature and 40kph winds. We are all set to prove S's prediction wrong but should we not survive the night I wish you all a most fond farewell, and must away to find my beanie.

Our Elliston home: Waterloo Bay Caravan Park.