10/12/23 Miserable Weather: Marion Bay To Port Victoria

Rain fell and the wind blew.  The weather was forecast to get worse before it got better.

In the interests of not sitting in the car for too long, we had a short day planned from Marion Bay to Port Victoria. With four hours to kill between check out and check in, we went as slowly as we could to avoid getting out of the warm dry car.

Final morning walk-by from our resident emu in Marion Bay.

Stopping in Minlaton for morning coffee, we found the memorial to Harry Butler and his Bristol M.1C monoplane aka the 'Red Devil.'

The Red Devil, beautifully restored, resides in its own glass display house in Minlaton.  It has company: a whole family of little Red Devils live there with it.

 

Harry Butler, so the story went, was interested in flight to the point that, as a child, he assiduously studied his family's chickens for inspiration. He started as an engineer with the Australian Flying School where he lasted a whole two weeks before resigning and hightailing off to England in 1916 to train as a pilot with the Royal Air Force.

Harry left the RAF in 1919 after a 'distinguished flying career' and brought two planes home with him, one of which was the Red Devil. In August of 1919 he flew the first air mail run from Adelaide across Gulf St Vincent to Minlaton, to the great excitement of all the eager letter recipients on the Yorke Peninsula.  This was the first flight over a major body of water in the southern hemisphere and the first one with air mail too!  Harry even wore an inflated tyre tube around his waist during the flight, as a safety precaution should he be forced to ditch into the waters below him.  Thankfully the robustness of this system was not put to the test.

Harry and the Red Devil carried on with all manner of joy-riding, barnstorming, and aerobatics.  He started an airline and an aerodrome until in 1922 the inevitable happened and he crashed his plane (the other one, not the Red Devil).  He survived only to die two years later from a cerebral abcess which was in part attributed to his injuries from the crash.

We spent quite a bit of time killing time in Minlaton.

We had lunch in Minlaton, looking out across the main street to the Minlaton Mall, which as you can see is a happening place.

 

From Minlaton we came back to the coast at Port Rickaby.

There was not a lot at Port Rickaby.  A sole pelican waited out the rain on the rocks.

Feeling brave, we struck off across the minor gravel roads from Port Rickaby toward Port Victoria.

This was perhaps not the best idea.

Feeling responsible, we struck off across the sealed roads to Port Victoria, where we checked into the Port Victoria Hotel, turned on the heater, and listened to the rain. Locked to the roof of the car, the bicycles rattled and rocked in the strong wind gusts. I went for a short walk during a break in the weather.

Port Victoria jetty and the teeny-tiniest Marine Museum I had ever seen.

Port Victoria foreshore with tidal zone vegetation.

The rain came in again with a vengeance.  I went back to our daggy little motel room and shut the door, and that was the end of the day.

Home for the night: Port Victoria Hotel-Motel.