I missed a ferry on a road trip, and found one of Australia's best camping spots
South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula is often overlooked by its popular neighbour Eyre Peninsula. But anyone who has put the blinker on to head south a little early (or miscalculated a ferry departure to Eyre, like I did) will be patting themselves on the back. Especially if camping is on the itinerary.
This boot-shaped landmass roughly 300km west of Adelaide, lies between Spencer Gulf and Gulf St Vincent and is directly north of Kangaroo Island.
At the south-western ‘toe’ of the boot is the peninsula’s best feature Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park, a wild and remote natural wonderland of rugged coastal bush, salt lakes, windswept jagged peninsulas and squint-inducing beaches where, on a good day (and there are plenty of them), creamy sand meets emerald green shallows meets deep blue sea.
Offshore, epic surf breaks attract a crowd and designated marine park ensures swimming, snorkelling and scuba-diving in waters home to red octopus, seals, sea lions, wild salmon and dolphins.
Cable Bay caravans find a space in the sandy dunes Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park - Pic Penny Watson
Blending into the incredible environment are seven campgrounds, each of varying sizes, facilities and natural features to suit tents, small caravans and camper trailers.
Shell Beach Campground, for example, is a tiny place with eight sites tucked into the scrub. Visitors lucky enough to score one (book early in peak season), need only follow a dirt track and a boardwalk over the dunes to access a perfect beach with great bodyboarding waves and the famed Shell Beach Rock Pool, a natural aquarium where you can slip below the surface and swim around with the fish.
Shell Beach Campground is a tiny place with eight sites tucked into the scrub. – Pic Penny Watson
Cable Bay Campground is another goodie and as close to the beach as you can camp in the park. Campers and caravanners can pitch in one of nine sandy clearings among the waist-high bush-covered dunes, and know that one of South Australia’s best surf breaks, Chainman’s (a quality left-hander for experienced surfers), is a short walk away.
Also within walking distance is Cape Spencer Lighthouse, with wind-buffeted views toward Kangaroo Island and a chance to glimpse southern right whales.
The Aussie landscape that makes this place great for adventurous campers is the same thing that made it difficult for settlers of long ago. When the surf is flat or the wind is up, you can explore their histories in the abandoned historic village of Inneston where the remains of a gypsum mine is the only surviving example of its kind.
Ethel wreck, the skeletal remains of a 711-tonne, three mast iron hulk, which has been resting on the shores here for over a century, is also worth clocking eyes on. The beautiful Stenhouse Bay wooden jetty is another mining relic which today serves excitable barefoot kids, sightseers and anyone with a rod. Sink a line here to catch mullet, mulloway and squid.
The beautiful Stenhouse Bay wooden jetty is another mining relic – Pic Penny Watson
The park’s terrestrial inhabitants are another highlight. In 2004 tammar wallabies were reintroduced after being extinct on the mainland since the 1920s. Today they’re hopping around the hinterland like they own the place.
A 40km speed limit through most of the park has been key to ensuring you’ll see more live native fauna than roadkill. Kangaroos and emus (with their chicks in tow) graze along the road verges. A growing population of the endangered mallow fowl is another win for nature.
Shell Beach Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park - Pic Penny Watson
The visitor centre, at the entry to the park provides plenty of info about toilets, barbeques, campgrounds and walking maps, but this place is remote and you’ll need to BYO pretty much everything.
If you forget ice (like it did), it’s a 40-minute drive from Shell Beach to the general store outside the national park. That said, next door to the general store is Marion Bay pub, which dishes up woodfired pizzas topped with local prawns and calamari. That ferry was well-worth missing.
Penny Watson is the author of Ultimate Campsites Australia and Slow Travel, both published by Hardie Grant.