A crossing of the Nullarbor from Western Australia eastwards lands you at the SA town of Ceduna. Ceduna is famous for being the first/last town on your trip across the Nullarbor, it’s oyster industry, proximity to Maralinga Atomic testing facility (~ 400kms) where only the brave can do a tour and relive it’s shameful history. Most of the area has been remediated (read ‘huge, deep pits that now contain 500,000 cubic metres of contaminated topsoil, graders, bulldozers, four-wheel drive vehicles and other equipment used in the final clean up only deemed contaminated for 25 years. Each burial pit has been capped with 5 metres of clean soil.’ ) A smaller restricted area will remain off-limits for an estimated 25,000 years!). We did not do this tour due to lack of time.
We followed the coastline from here southeast onto the Eyre Peninsula. More lime stone cliffs extend down to the southern tip of the Eyre Peninsula to Port Lincoln, making for a wild rugged coastline full of stories of hardship.
Charted by Matthew Flinders in 1802 he must have found it tough – one time having to leave eight crew ashore after becoming lost while searching for water, and you can see how miserable he found this coast as reflected in the naming of some of the bays – Avoid Bay, Coffin Bay, Denial Bay, Anxious Bay, Mount Hope and Cape Catastrophe. This is the area where in 1802 French explorer Nicholas Baudin met up with the English explorer Mathew Flinders both charting/exploring this coast at Encounter Bay.
The meeting between Flinders and Baudin
Flinders was aware that the French expedition had sailed from France some months before his own, but Baudin did not know that an English ship was also exploring the coast of southern Australia. The two expeditions met by accident on 8 April 1802, one sailing from the east and the other from the west. Flinders on the Investigator, cleared the decks for action, but also flew a white flag of truce. Nicolas Baudin, captain of the French ship Le Geographe thought the ship approaching was his companion vessel Le Naturaliste which he had last seen several weeks ago. In addition to the French flag, he hoisted an English flag. Both captains were cautious as they did not know whether their countries were at war or peace, but as they were commanding exploration and scientific expeditions, they could hope that their meeting would be peaceful. Flinders boarded the French ship and the two captains exchanged information about their explorations. Both captains had been given the same task to chart the ‘unknown coast’ of Terra Australis. The meeting took place about 5 miles off the South Australian coast at latitude 35º 40′ South, longitude 138º 58′ East. Flinders later named this location Encounter Bay, as it is known today.
We have a sailing friend Graham (FISH) Southwick who frequented these shores as an abalone diver in the 70’s and lived to tell the tale! There were no boat ramps back then and barely any suitable places to launch a boat so he and his fellow divers cut a step track to a small sheltered beach down a cliff face with and old D3 tractor and installed an old engine and winch at the top to help haul the boats back up.
This was detailed in his self published book ‘A Hard Day at the Office’ and was a good reason to make our own expedition to find said track or the remains thereof. With the help of ‘Fish’ on the phone from Thailand we went looking just South of Point Drummond – great fun which took all day but was ultimately successful. The photos show as it is today and how it was in the 1970s. You can see the actual dynamite explosion to blow a hole in the reef – try doing that today! There were many memorials along the point and overlooking the launching ramp to those who lost their lives in great white shark attacks while abalone diving here. Attacks have increased in recent times and sharks are more numerous since the ban on culling great white sharks enacted in 1999.
The Eyre Peninsula gets plenty of rainfall on it’s west coast so it is far from dry (and dam cold at present) Sheep farming has been established from early days and nowadays there are also huge wheat, barley and canola crops. Interestingly the land was fenced with “Drummond Fencing” which were schists/ limestone walls (also having the effect of clearing the land) which interlocked and used no mortar. Originally prison labour was used in the 1850’s but later men were paid 10 shillings a chain (22m) and a good man (without a broken back) could build 2 chains a day. Those pioneers were tough
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