5/12/2023 Port Turton to Corny Point

Sentry on duty.

 I left Roger to fend for himself with the delicate balance between back care and work, while I followed the WtY out of Point Turton past the jetty and the caravan park, past bush campers tucked into the cliff top free camping, and past fishing shacks strung out along the shoreline.

Point Turton shack architecture.

 

The path ducked in and out between clumps of vegetation, with occasional forays out to clifftop lookouts or through sheoak groves where wind soughed in the foliage and my tyres were silent on the sand. Snails clustered in enormous numbers on the fence pickets and on the stalks of wheat stubble in the paddocks, littered the ground and popped under my tyres on the road.

So many snails...

There is a star picket under that.

And a bike posing photo, just because.

 

I took a detour to Burner's Beach bush camping area, accessed by a delightful little track wedged in between the cliffs and the sea. 

 

From Burner's Beach WtY walkers were encouraged to take to the beach but I still couldn't bring myself to take my precious new bike out on the sand so back up to the road I went. It was nice enough, cycling along a gravel road surrounded by wheat.

I saw sheep, which made a welcome break from wheat.

Sheep are very hard to photograph.  The minute you stop they all turn their backs and run away, so all the photos are of sheep bottoms.  Sheep should take lessons from cattle, who always stop to look.

 

Then I saw my first snake for the season. It was not a happy snake but fortunately (for me, not the snake) the biting end was not working which didn't make neurological sense but I didn't get close enough to investigate further.

 

Things got a little dull. Flies fought to get under my fly net, the sun was hot, the wind strengthened to bothersome. I admired the vegetation colours in the salt swamps beside the road and counted down the kilometres.

 

I was very happy to roll into Corny Point, call Roger for my pick up, and eat hot chips from the Corny Point store. Corny Point strung itself out along the shore with the usual Caravan Park, old church repurposed to a museum/public building, slightly dowdy playground, and a shuttered community centre. Large tractors sat in driveways, ready to tow boats in and out across the wide beach when the tide was low. 

 

Down at the boat ramp I watched the pelicans and struck up a conversation with a couple from Adelaide. We contemplated a man, a boat, a tractor which was surrounded by water, and debated how high the tide needed to rise before the tractor would no longer be operational. Our consensus was that the man was late getting back with the boat, and the tide had risen to the point that the conventional plan of hitching the tractor to the boat and heading back to shore was problematic.  Intriguing as this was, none of us stuck around to find out how it all worked out. 

The tractor, the boat, the man.

My new friends, who were staying at the Point Turton Caravan Park, told me that every afternoon at 1630 the eagle rays came in to feed at the jetty and it was possible to paddle or swim amongst them. That was too interesting an opportunity to pass up, so off I went to the jetty at 1630.

Where everything happens in Point Turton.

Sure enough, after a bit of waiting and chatting with the other waiting people (all two of them) some eagle rays arrived and swam in slightly disinterested circles around us while a small boy on the jetty above yelled "They killed Steve Irwin you know!" The silly whippersnapper hadn't even been thought of when Steve Irwin died, and neither had the innocent rays, so what would he know?

 

Back at home Roger perused a very old book of jokes, delighting in reading aloud gags that, if used today, would cause horror rather than hilarity.

We watched the tide rise while the pelicans squabbled over ever-diminishing real estate on the beach. The sun set without fanfare, obliterated by clouds.

Another day was done.