Clockwise Around Aus: Streaky Bay and Surrounds

Streaky Bay is a lovely, sleepy seaside town and the caravan park is right on the water. We only had 1 day/2 nights there and it was blowing a gale for a fair bit of it, so it wasn't particularly pleasant to be outside or at the beach. Regardless, I still liked it as a town and I can see why lots of people love staying there.

Caravan park foreshore and view

One of the most bizarre things about Streaky Bay is that wheat is grown almost to the cliff/beach edge. Coming from where we do in NSW we just aren't used to seeing crops growing that close to the ocean, and certainly not wheat. So you look over all these beautiful pale brown wheat fields to the ocean beyond and it is lovely.

In 1990 a young man caught a Great White Shark on a handline off Streaky Bay, and given that it's not far from there that you can go cage diving with sharks, I wasn't too keen to go in the water. There is a lifesize replica of the Great White on display at the Shell Service Station, so we went to check it out... it is truly a monster. It was over 5m long and weighed 1500kg! Scary as to imagine being in the water with that! There is a netted swimming area near the jetty, and I am guessing that is where most people swim... pretty much no one was in the water more than ankle deep when we were there because the wind was just too unpleasant, or perhaps they knew something we didn't.

Shark replica

On our first day we did one of the tourist drives and drove out to Whispering Rocks and the Blowholes. The weathered limestone coast makes for some very rugged and interesting views. The Whispering Rocks makes a 'dragon breathing in a cave' type of sound when the waves rush in to a cave (Tilda's description). It was certainly more of a noisy breathing sound than a whistle, as such, but it certainly an interesting phenomenon. The Blowholes weren't blowing when we were there. I don't know if the tide was too low or if the sea just wasn't rough enough/big enough waves, but given that they're a short way from town, it's worth the drive to check them both out (they're next to each other).

Whistling Rocks

The Blowholes lookout

Our second day we drove to Point Labatt to see the sea lion colony. This is definitely worth the 51km (one way) drive. It is the only place on mainland Australia where you can see sea lions and while you are up on a cliff above the colony, with binoculars or a good zoom camera lens, you can see them so well. We got to watch pups feeding and playing about in a rock pool, as well as see all of the ones just lazing about sleeping on the rocks and sand. We were there for half an hour or so before Rory started getting bored and I could have stayed there for hours. It was simply amazing to watch.