Gone for longer than expected!

Yes, we were away for longer than I said we would be, which was a great bonus, and then when we got back, my dh had heaps of paper work to do on the computer while I seemed to have a whole lot of other errands. But we had a great, refreshing break and here are some of the photos we took. You'll see that they probably took plenty of the space I would've taken if I'd been blogging regularly throughout February, anyway. It's great to be back on the blog.

Anyway, up there is the beach house we stayed in. It belongs to some friends of ours from church. Out the front is our yellow Holden Commodore.

It's in Point Turton, on the Yorke Peninsula. One of the peninsulas at the bottom of South Australia is shaped like a leg & and foot. This is right on the coast on the top of the foot.

One of my favourite parts of the Peninsula is the National Park area at the very bottom. There is this old ghost town called Inneston, which was inhabited until the 1920s. They were gypsum miners who eventually stopped earning enough money for their product and moved elsewhere. The place was left to run down and we were able to wander about among the old buildings. Here the fireplace, all that remains of one of them. It was an eerie feeling.

But other buildings were still reasonably sound. This was an old general store. I found the plaques and photos quite fascinating to read and see. People were virtually cut off from civilisation. If they wanted to post mail, they had to wait until one of their villagers was going to make a trip to Edithburgh, (further around the coast), and then the post would be delayed until a steamer was heading across the gulf to Adelaide.

We take our lifestyles for granted. But perhaps there were advantages to not having our media pouing out information 24/7, whether we want it or not. Although it definitely had its hardships, this sounds like a relatively peaceful sort of lifestyle. Andrew and I could have spent even longer here, but after awhile the kids were ready to move on.

Back on the road, our timing was good enough to come across this group of wild emus. They were pecking at little berries on the shrubs and bushes that grew there and didn't seem too concerned when our car moved through them.

I got Logan to see if he could lean out of the back window and take a close-up of them, and this is the result. You can see the little berries they were going for. They're such quaint birds, and when they run, they're really fast.

This is a beach with a shipwreck on it. A ship named "The Ethel" was grounded there in the 1800s. Maybe you can just spot a bit of it, that Blake is running back to. But it's surprising how much the ship has disintegrated in the 25 years since my brother and I were climbing on its decks and rushing all over it when we were young. Surely 1983 wasn't all that long ago?

This beach had some massive waves that left even Logan open-mouthed. They were high as walls and just smashed down on the shore, leaving oodles of foam in their wake. And the water, coming straight from the Southern Ocean rather than the Gulf, was freezing. Emma was anxious for a swim but there was no way she could have swum here. However, the sand was that squeaky gold type that you can sink up to your knees in.

Although she wanted a swim, most of the Yorke Peninsula coast is fairly rocky and slimy. More suitable for searching for crabs and sea creatures than it is for swimming. But we did find a few spots.

This beautiful old church is in Moonta, on the upper Yorke Peninsula. It's one of my favourite towns because most of its old buildings are wonderfully old and well-kept, like this. We stopped there for lunch and visited a genuine old miner's house. It's part of what's known as the "copper triange" along with Kadina and Wallaroo, the other two towns that make it up.

Every house has these huge, funny looking t.v. and radio aerials. I don't know if you can get the effect from these photos, but it looked a bit weird and alien-like to us, like "War of the Worlds" or "Day of the Triffids." This is a typical Australian colonial home with its "bull nose" verandah, for shade.

Logan was pleased to see that some of our own South Aussie coastline is pretty spectacular, just like the lower coast of Victoria. "See, those Vics don't have everything." Being a keen Aussie rules football supporter, he participates keenly in the traditional rivalry between the two states which extends to absolutely everything.

There's one of several lighthouses we saw. The coast was speckled with them but they weren't enough to prevent several shipwrecks that also lined the coast.

Anyway, that was our relaxing break and I'm looking forward to catching up with other blogs after such a long absence.