Thursday, Feb 18, 2016

It had drizzled rain off-and-on all night but it stopped at sunrise. I woke up at 5:30 am, after a good sleep and started to pack up, before walking to a cafe for breakfast. After breakfast I started driving towards Torquay.

I didn’t get too far. I reached several ” lookouts ” that I hadn’t had time to see before and I was glad I had the time to see them now. They were amazing.

Notice the cave at the right side near the water. Of course I had to go into it.

I couldn’t believe how big the cave was. This is a picture from the back of the cave facing outwards.

I had a lot more pictures of the shoreline and I have placed them in a folder and I have imbedded a link to them, in case someone wants to see more pictures indicating the artwork created by the water wind and sand –
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=BC9F145E7DC17E78!3176&authkey=!AH8gm5jSiwFsuRk&ithint=folder%2cjpg .

As I walked along the paths, I noticed something ” slithering ” away very quickly. It didn’t seem like a snake and later I saw two more. The last one I saw on the path and it stayed around long enough to get a picture of him. I believe it is a newt.

I stopped for lunch close to Apollo and there were several parakeets outside. I could see why they were there. The owner had bird feeders strategically placed outside the windows which were attracting the parakeets and in turn attracted customers.

I was about to leave when a young fellow who had just been dropped off by someone at the cafe, waved at me and asked if I could give him a ride to Apollo. I offered him a ride and found out that he was hiking the south coast while his parents were in Sydney at a ” soil ” conference. His father is a soil expert and he is a hotel manager in Wisconsin who loves to hike and travel. I dropped him off at his car in Apollo and then continued on to Torquay.

On the way, I noticed that a fire had recently destroyed many hectares of land along the beach. I saw many evidences of fire damage in northern Canada this summer, but here the vegetation is a little different. Both New Zealand and Australia have fire bans in effect, in many areas because of drought conditions, however this area does not have a fire ban at the moment.

When I finally reached Torquay, I reserved a campsite, set up my tent and went to the beach. I went into the water but I didn’t swim, because the waves were too rough and there were numerous young people learning to surf.

This is my last full day in South Australia. Tomorrow I am scheduled to fly to Cairns in the northeast.