Burra to Point Lowly

From Burra it was time to leave the inland behind and head for the coast. We hit the coast at the large Spencer Gulf town of Port Pirie where, after a little shopping and a visit to the Great White Shark exhibition at the information centre, it was time for a relaxing lunch on the waterfront. After lunch it was back on the highway northward around the top of Spencer Gulf through Port Augusta to the head south down the Eyre Peninsular.

We had chosen this time to stay at Point Lowly, a place we had not been before, approximately 34 Km. north east of Whyalla. There is a free camping area located here with clean flushing toilets and cold showers. Because it is free to stay up to 14 days you would expect it to be popular, but even with this thought in mind we were totally surprised to see the number of campers there. For our first night we had to resort to setting up in the large car and boat trailer parking area at the top of the rise which we found to be very exposed to the strong wind. Thankfully the next morning several vans left the lower waterside area so we quickly took up one of those spots. Our original intention was stay a few days, but with the spectacular visual surroundings and the convenience of the facilities, and the price, we ended up staying 10 days.

Point Lowly is the major location of the Australian Snapper Fishing Championships so, as you can imagine the fishing is very good, although you need to have a boat to take advantage of this. There is a very good small boat harbour with an excellent launching ramp facility and a breakwall/jetty to fish from. Land based anglers are restricted to catches of crabs and squid, and we enjoyed a meal of both during our stay. For the boat fishermen catches of snapper up to and over 1 metre were quite a regular occurrence and they only have to go about 200 metres off shore.

On the southern side of the point there is beautiful white sand swimming beach which quite contrastingly is next to the major Santos oil and gas processing and loading facility at Port Bonython. During our stay we made a couple of trips into Whyalla for shopping and found these facilities more than adequate.