012 - Ceduna

So today was earmarked to check out Ceduna. Morning was relatively uneventful as the bigger kids did some school work and James and I did the dinner/breakfast dishes and hounded people in the caravan park as we looked for things starting with the letter ‘C’.

I had got into discussion with Kirk from the front desk who offered to lend us some crab nets and gave us some bait and said “head down to the jetty with the kids and try your luck”. What a very generous offer.

So we loaded the fishing gear into the truck and trundled off to the jetty to check it out.

The end is out there somewhere. We found it and sat there for hours.

A very impressive jetty it is, the pick of any of the ones we’ve seen or fished from so far in my opinion. And there we stayed for four and a half hours. It’s an amazingly fun and engaging way to spend time with your kids, providing the fish are biting and in this case, we had a couple of local lads around Sam’s age to talk to.

And I tell you, those fellas could fish… Certainly gleaned a few tips from them.

These guys were great with our three and the older of the three (obviously the chaperone) had the right balance of respect and cheekiness. Nice to see independent kids like this that could still hold a great conversation.

Evie admiring the effectiveness of her squid jig.

Yep... I'm definitely struggling adjusting to this.

Our attempts were pretty fruitful too with a crap load of trumpers (zebra fish – or sh!tfish if asking the local lads) but probably around 5 Tommy Ruffs (Australian Herring). The boys spotted a few squid chasing the fish, and borrowing one of our squid jigs managed to hook one almost immediately.

But the highlight by far was pulling up the crab nets and nabbing two very nicely sized Blue Swimmer Crabs. A small quantity by locals standards, but the size impressed the lads so the must have been reasonable.

Was going to write something about catching crabs in my past, but I think I'll rephrase it to just "check out these blue swimmers!"

Pots, burners and gas, as well as cleaning facilities all supplied for free. Certainly made those of us not travelling particularly kitted up, very easy to enjoy the process.

Yum!!!

Coming back we were helped by some knowledgable Nomads who gave us some tips on how to cook them and use the provided crab cooking facilities, a new for caravan parks I’ve attended.

Teamed up with some roasted spuds and leftover roast and salad and we were pretty happy campers I can tell you.

But as for Ceduna… Nup. Not many redeeming features I’m afraid. If you don’t like fishing, there’s not much here for you other than a bit of a refuel and refresh before or after the Nullabor and then time to move on.

We’re ready to take on the next phase nice and early tomorrow morning. Just need to work out how I can snaffle a crab net off Kirk…