2015/11 Australia trip - Lincoln |
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We stopped for coffee overlooking the bay, a long stop as we needed to reinflate the tyres for blacktop roads. But then it was only a half hour
drive to Port Lincoln and a little further to the park. Like Coffin Bay, the park is large and occupies a peninsula. It’s on the south side of Boston Bay, facing Port Lincoln across the water.
Our first impression was that the park was mostly flat, with the road hemmed in by dense bush, not very interesting, but the 
scenery improved around the coast. There’s a hiking trail that climbs about 500 feet up Stamford Hill to a memorial to Flinders but we were still sore from the previous day, We tried one of the 4wd tracks but it turned out to be flooded and very dark under the trees and very buggy, so we turned around – not easy! The plants there were similar to Coffin Bay’s so I’ve only shown a couple, a grevillea and a bottlebrush.
We drove to the end of the regular road, site of the Cape Donnington lighthouse, a somewhat utilitarian building of grey concrete. We walked the beach trail there, good views and plenty of wildlife, but as well as the usual outback flies we had lots of biting flies in the mix. The Aussies call all of these March flies, but having been bitten in every state, I know there are at least a half dozen different species involved and they snack on humans in most months. They vary in size from American deer flies up to horse flies. They all hurt and cause blood to flow.
We camped at September Beach, in one of a half dozen or so compounds, well back from the beach. We were enjoying sitting out in the sunshine for a little while. The outback flies left us at sundown, but the biters were out in force. We sat there swatting the biting flies and feeding them to the ants, who’d take them apart and carry the bits off.
The campground had a water tank and we learned to open the tap and stand back as all the bees that had been in the pipe would come rushing out. The alternative was to fish them out of the saucepan.
Monday November 9th
I got up early; there were no outback flies yet but there were swarms of biters out in the predawn light so I went back to bed for an hour. While I was dozing I heard a golf cart drive up and check our pass; there’s a $200 fine for camping without one, but this was the only place it was ever checked.
We decided to move on rather than explore the park any further. Maybe we were just tired but it was not a park we enjoyed much.