Swim with Sealions at Baird Bay

About 50kms from Streaky Bay is the Baird Bay, small town with just few houses and a camp ground. It is famous for the 'Swim with Sealions and Dolphins' tour. Operated by the locals here. That's the purpose we are here!

Camp ground with compose toilet and bbq facility. Camp fee is honesty system too.

Sunset walk along the beach

Saw these two cute kangaroos (probably looking at the sunset) as we take a bush walk.

The Baird Bay Eco Ocean Experience departs twice daily to see the dolphins and sealions. These animals have settled in Baird Bay for quite some time so it is always easy to see them. Following the tour is easier, as they provide snorkelling equipments, wet suits, and shark protection. It's $140 per pax for the tour, lasts about 4 hours. It's better to make a booking before coming to Baird Bay as they may not have a tour in bad weather.

It's really once in a lifetime experience, swimming so closely with these cute sea animals. The dolphins are quite shy, though they came to see and swim a while but did not stay long. But the sealions are really playful, they will come close and even kiss you on the hand!

A: The water is freezing~~~

The tour offers some hot drinks and biscuits on the boat as well.

Dont miss this video - swim with sealion!!! but be patient cause it is a 4 mins video and it worth to see.

They are AMAZING and PLAYFUL!!

Bits of info about Australian Sea Lions and Bottlenose Dolphins

Sea lions: are the ‘eared seals’. They have tiny external ears and can lift their bodies off the ground with their four flippers. They are the fastest seals and can swim up to 40km/h.

Unlike other seals, their gestation is up to 18 months and not 12 months, as most others are. Females come ashore at breeding sites, mother usually returning to their place of birth to give birth themselves. Mature sea lions live on average for 20 years.

Dolphins:  forehead is distinctly curved and houses the ‘melon’ that is used to emit sonar clicks into the water. They can swim up to 30km/h. Inshore dolphins will often work together to herd schooling fish and have been known to chase fish onto sandbanks and to beach themselves temporarily to catch them. In captivity dolphins can live as long as 40 years, in the wild they only live 25 to 30 years. Dolphins have a special sense called ‘echo location’ which is used for navigation and to find food. Echo locate on involves the production of sound in the naval sacs. The sound is focused by the ‘melon’ and then projected towards the object in the water. Sounds that strike any object are reflected back and received by the lower jaw, where they are passed to the brain. Dolphins can form sound pictures of objects based on the difference between the density of the object and the density of surrounding water. Their colour vision is limited, have no sense of smell, but have excellent sense of taste.

Streaky Bay

Streaky Bay Jetty

Streaky Bay is a good base for exploring the coastline or the inland of national park (Flinders Ranges). It also has few supermarkets for stocking up before you go into the outback. We tried some fishing off this jetty too, but to no avail. A kind family gave us some crabs and tommy ruff herring they caught~ So good, now we don't have to worry about our dinner =P

There are few scenic drives recommended around this town which are really good. We started with the Cape Bauer Drive which takes about two hours.

Cape Bauer*****

The Westall Way Loop***** is the more interesting drive in our opinion. But if you have time, both is a must do. There are camping grounds in both drives, fee is applicable but works on the honesty system. So. . . up to you if you want to pay =)

 The Granites - The rock looks like some kind of animal

The Smooth Pool***** which is very good for swimming as it is protected by the reefs so that sharks could not swim in! It's also good for snorkelling, too bad we haven't bought the snorkelling equipments!

We chose to camp at Speed Point (cause its 'free'). No facilities there at all, just sandy grounds so we had to bring our own water. Some hike down the hills brings us to this beach. Not a single person here =)

Campfire at night, aahhh... so warm~~

 Point Labatt Sealion Colony*****

It's a long way in, about 12kms of dirt road. But still accessible by 2wd. This picture is actually taken from a hilltop view about 50m high. So it is quite far from the colony, best to bring a binocular to observe them.

Ceduna, crabs and oysters~

Ceduna was the first town we arrive from the Nullabor. It is the quarantine checkpoint of fruits and vegetables for travelers towards South OZ. That means anyone travelling into Ceduna from Western OZ must not bring any fruit or veggies.

The town attracts many tourists to stop over with its beautiful fishing and crabbing jetty, has two supermarkets, camping and fishing specialty shop (which is not that expensive, at least cheaper than Streaky Bay) and handful of caravan parks. It attracted us to stay for 3 days at the Foreshore Caravan Park mainly due to the shopping we need to do (buying camping and fishing equipments) and the easy crabbing opportunity.

The caravan park is not big, but well managed and has good facilities like fish cleaning station (equipped with big pots for people to cook crabs), camp kitchen with gas BBQ, and sells bait as well. They also lease crab nets for free, the catch is that you just have to buy crab bait from them for $7. The camp & fishing shop beside Foodland supermarket sells crab net for $12 if you want to do crabbing very often =)

The caravan park manager said it’s really easy to catch crabs, just put the bait in the net (secured by a steel), chuck it into the water then pull out every 10mins. And you’ll have crabs!

We were so delighted when we heard that. We went crabbing in the morning, around 8.30am when the tide is still high. About half an hour later, still no crabs. Then slowly you will see the blue reflections, moving towards the net. Those are blue swimmer crabs. It’s really interesting as you can see them get into the net, and you pull the string up!

We managed to get five crabs~ That’s enough for our lunch now =PP

                                           White Southern Hairy Wombat – Cute little fella

After the crabbing, we went to Ceduna Wombat Rescue Homestead to see the rare White Wombat. The homestead is privately owned, and they put so much effort into rescuing and nurturing problematic wombats (such as bowel disorder or physical injuries caused by cars) back to normal. Then bring them back to zoos. There are three types of wombat: Common wombat, southern hairy wombat and the rare northern hairy nose wombat.They sleep in dark boxes in the homestead because they are used to live in burrows in the wild. The wombats will be let out to dig holes and play around in the garden certain time of the day.

One of the native animals of Australia, the wombats are like the koalas, sleeping about three quarter of its time a day. Their teeth look like squirrel.

The homestead is open for public visiting from 10.30am to 11.30am daily and receives voluntary donations.

The freshest crab we ever had, boil in seawater.

 Our dinner – Catch of the day Porridge with egg and ginger. YUMS~~

The day we left Ceduna, we took a stroll along the beach. We saw so many oyster shells on the beach~ Suspecting that it might be the right time for oyster season, we begin to hunt for the oysters~! We walk and walk, and finally manage to find one growing on the rocks. The oyster really disguised within the rocks and we have to look really carefully. Another hard part is to remove it from the rocks. Gosh. . . Luckily we bought an oyster chucker, makes it bit easier. Sometimes we can only open the top shell, so the only way is to eat it right away, from the rocks with seawater in it! Eventually we got these . . .

A group of aboriginals past by and were curious on what we are doing (trying to open the shells). They offer to help out. They did open the oyster but then dropped it onto the floor >.< Then one of them who knows how to speak Mandarin (Ni hao ma? ) asked for two dollars, to buy some drinks. Eventually we give it to them. =.=

That two dollars = a picture with the aboriginals from Yalata Community.

Enjoyed them with Tabasco sauce and squeezed lemon =)

SO FRESH

Head of Bight, Penong, Cactus Beach

From About 12kms east of Nullabor rdhse is the Head of Bight*****. This park is famous for whale watching during May to September. But it is open during off peak season as well for a cheaper entrance fee of $5. Opening time is 9am till 4pm. It is a good walk around the park with two observation platform to see the whales . . . When they are here. . .  

The cliffs at Head of Bight

From Head of Bight, we stopped at Penong for some snacks then proceed to its world class surfing beach, Cactus Beach*****. Although it is well known, there are no signboards leading the way to it. Just make a turn into the primary school then continue south of Penong for 20 kms of dirt road. The road is very bumpy, but still accessible by 2wd. The journey into the beach is so nice, with Lake Mcdonnell (the pink salt lake) as an eye opener. Then the various bird species around some small lakes and lastly the big Blue Lake.

 First time seeing a Pink Lake~! It is so beautiful, its colour best seen on a hot sunny day!

Wikipedia: Pink Lake is a result of the green alga Dunaliella salina and the halobacterium Halobacteria cutirubrum. Once the lake water reaches a salinity level greater than that of sea water, the temperature is high enough and adequate light conditions are provided, the alga begins to accumulate the red pigment beta carotene. The pink halobacteria grow in the salt crust at the bottom of the lake and the colour of the lake is a result of the balance between D. salina and H. cutirubrum

                                 You can see the different colours of the lake on both sides =)

There is only bush camping facility in Point Sinclair beside Cactus Beach, privately owned, costs $10 per pax. With toilet, outdoor shower and dishwashing/ laundry basin. The beach itself is good for surfing, not that good for swimming cause it’s full of small rocks.

Sunset is simply beautiful here

360 ̊of starry night at the bush camp

There is a walking trail around the coast of the beach, up the cliffs then the gorge and back to the camp which takes us 3 hours return. We saw many wildlife along the walk, among them the rock crabs, pied cormorant birds, slow moving bobtail lizard, sooty oystercatcher bird. It was a good and tiring walk =)

Rock Crabs

Pied Cormorants hanging around the cliffs

The gorge of Point Sinclair

The nearby Le Hunte Jetty, good for swimming