Lets go camping

Pats 'stick' Scorpion


Smallish female Australian Sea Lion on the beach in front of camp.


A large female Orb Weaver right in the camp.


The small Bandy Bandy in our Billy. (hows that for clever naming of a species)




Yep, lets go camping in Australia folks, these pics are taken from just one four day camp near Port Gibbon in Southern South Australia.
Other countries have great scenery, great mountain views and forests and lakes...we may have all those things but we're too busy looking down to see what we're treading on...
Of course we all know that the biggest White Pointer Sharks live right here in our waters together with the quite deadly Blue Ringed Octopus and many, many other poisonous sea creatures. Everyone knows that most of the worlds most dangerous snakes come from right here, while I was looking up this small snake I found that of the 27 snakes found here 23 of them are poisonous...hell, that’s near enough 100% for me!
..and spiders? It’s getting too cold for the Red Back now we’re into Autumn, so they can only be found under bark, tin or other cover but now it’s the time for Orb Weavers and other hunting spiders like the Huntsman or Wolf Spider which can be seen pretty much everywhere. One of our campers used his hand to collect the odd little Orange and Black snake (Bandy Bandy) and was very sick the next day and for several days after…though he insists he did not get bitten another camper says it looked like he did.
While I was Googling to see if he was likely to die or not it occurred to me that we Australians are pretty blasé about the deadly critters we share the country with.
Indeed our barefoot kids and grandkids were running around camp and playing while one camper lay sick and I was busy looking up his symptoms on the laptop.
Next day my daughter was busy in the camp kitchen (housework follows you everywhere) and noticed a ‘stick’ stuck to her shoe. Upon further inspection she realized it was a Scorpion she must have annoyed… she now holds the record for the fastest removal of shoes. A day later she was showing me where that happened and we found another one… or the same one that came back. (does anyone know about the homing instincts of Scorpions?)
Each evening the huge Orb Weavers quickly spin a new web to catch as many insects as possible before it gets too cold for them and they have to retire to their hides. The one pictured used the light streaming through the cars window to hunt right in front of us each night. There's nothing freakier than walking through an Orb Weaver web in the dark… you know that spider is in there somewhere. I’ve been bitten by Orb Weavers many times now…it’s about the same as a bee sting.
Danger was not reserved just in the camp though, the sand hills are covered with Snake, Spider and Centipede tracks…BIG poisonous Centipede tracks.. and the beach is home to Australian Sea Lions. Not your cute and friendly Seal types, these Sea Lions grow huge (over a ton) and have teeth like giant Rottweilers. If you surprise them or if you happen to disturb them they chase you with every intention of either crushing you or biting you, I know this from experience as I got too close many years ago and was chased up a sand hill. (OK, so it was only a few metres but it was just as well I had brown underpants on that day) During the day they haul out and lay in the warm sea weed, near enough invisible as you walk by, should you happen to invade their personal space however…
So why do we take these dangers in our stride and ignore the possible threats to our lives?
Fucked if I know!



* No animals were hurt during this camp, however one or two of the campers may still die.


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Shh, dont tell anyone!

My nemesis for this weekend... (no killing the wildlife!)

My grand daughter Amie with just one of the many small crabs the kids caught and released. Hows this for lovely clear water?

This was our beach for the weekend with the stairs in fore ground.

Then I turned around and took a pic facing the other way, you can see the sand hills where we sand surfed, at the base of the sand hills is the seal colony and the rocky headland where the lads got their arms stretched.

Sand boarding anyone? This is the beginner slopes with hills twice this size further around

The lads on the headland known as Snapper Rocks

One of the Australian Sea Lions..not dead, just lazy!





What with half the eastern states of Australia under water I felt kinda bad about swaning off for a weekend away…for about half an hour.
There's this almost untouched area only 70 miles away you see… people drive past it every day without knowing that just down that dirt road is paradise by the sea. (Shh! Don’t tell)
Untouched beaches only broken here and there by the rocky headlands that provide great fishing and designate where my beach ends and yours begins. Just back from the cliff edge the camp sites hide under low trees for protection against summer sun.
Normally it would be too late in the season already and this area would be baking in unbelievable heat, but this year is different. Temps in the low 80’s (low 30’s C) and above average rain this year has left this area green and inviting even now.
So it was we set off with 4 kids, my daughter and her other half and another friend, two cars, a trailer, a mountain of camping gear and an assortment of alcohol. (medicinal purposes only of course)
Our chosen beach was at the bottom of a stair built down the low cliffs many years ago by someone called Mills, (so the sign says) our camp perhaps 150 yards from the cliff for child safety sake and everything within a mile or so of everywhere we wanted to see… I wont bore you with the details but our weekend consisted of much swimming in the warm water of our beach, fishing on the prominent headland a mile away, watching the sea lions on the beach where you can walk right up to them (if you have a fish for them) sand surfing on the huge dunes, hunting for and placing a few Geocaches… I think that about covers the main things.
I also had some rather wonderful 12 year old scotch left from a Christmas present (cant have it going off before it’s/I’m drunk can we?) and Pearls rather good first book in what I hope will be a series…(http://pearl-whyyoulittle.blogspot.com/) I read, I drank, I laughed, I staggered to the beach with fishing rod in hand, I spent a lot of time with the grand kids…wonderful!

There's almost nothing bad about this spot…almost! There are rather a lot of sharks here abouts, not that we actually saw any this time, and there are a lot of creepy crawlies. Last time we found a beautiful jet black 3inch Scorpion wondering about the camp and this time I found a really big Wolf Spider. They grow about twice the size of this one… but this one found the box for my camp stove and would not give it up for some reason. I though, ‘Ok, you can have it then’ and put the box and spider 20 feet away from my camp. It marched about on the box guarding it from me for 15 minutes then decided it wanted my camp too. It abandoned the box and marched directly back into camp…I was just thinking it might be a nice night to give up the camp and sleep out under the stars… But no, I’m the bigger of us so I got into bed and ignored the spider rampaging about the camp until it eventually gave up showing off and went home (where ever that was)
We’re going back in a couple of weeks…my son-in-law now knows about this hidden wonderland and cant wait to get back there. He caught some fish, but not the huge monsters that smashed up his gear and bent his best rod double…probably Snapper or Sharks, I’ll let you know!


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