Cruising the Coorong: Wellington to Salt Creek

Across the Big Water

The Murray River is Australia's longest river and, apparently, the third longest navigable river in the world (although I thought that title might have belonged to the Mighty Mississippi). People used to catch huge Murray River Cod in the river, but their numbers are much diminished these days. Our day started with a free ferry ride across the Murray at the last ferry crossing before the river empties itself into Lake Alexandrina. Here's a shot Jim took of the rest of us on the ferry ...

Doug, Neil, Jacquei, Jen and Di on the ferry

And I shot a little video looking upstream and across to our landing ...

On the Coorong!

Crossing the Murray meant that we were now into the next stage of our journey: the wonderful Coorong, which I first heard of when I encountered Colin Thiele's classic children's novel, Storm Boy. Here's a picture of our crew passing the sign that tells us that we're now in Coorong country ...

Entering the Coorong

Our group soon split into three, with Jacquei and I in the vanguard, followed by Jim and Jen and then Di and Neil. Di took a couple of good photos of the canola right on the edge of the viable farming land ...

Coorong canola ...

... and again

She also took a nice photo of some high swamp grasses ...

Grasses alongside the water's edge

... and a video to try to capture the bustle of the birds within ...

Up ahead, I sat up and got a video panning around the landscape, with Jacquei adding some human interest ...

We soon arrived at Meningie on the shores of Lake Albert for morning tea, which was a great spread laid out by Kathy: a mix of nuts and dates; fresh mandarin orange segments and apple slices and CHOCOLATE MACADAMIA COOKIES! What a ripper! 

Delights of the Coorong

After a very leisurely break we got back out on the road. Di and I found ourselves in front, cruising along as slowly as we could trying to let the others catch up. It felt like we were waiting for Godot, until eventually Neil arrived ...

It turned out that Jacquei was orchestrating a video shoot, including a little clip showing the power of Jim's legs. I mentioned in an earlier post that Jim had such powerful thighs that I thought of him as The Man of Multiple Thighs. This video also suggests another moniker ... Homo Sapiens Colossus Calfus ...

Eventually Jacquei caught up to us and shot on past. Di and I continued our easy pace but found ourselves gradually pulling away from Neil each time we arrived at a small rise, but then we've got a few more recent kilometres in our legs than he has in his. 

We stopped when we saw a flock of Black Cockatoos take to the air. I tried to get them on video with mixed success ...

A little further along we arrived at a small keratin-tinted lake where some other people had also stopped to take photographs ...

Panko Point

Salt Creek

We arrived at Salt Creek in sunshine and put up our tents out the back of the roadhouse ...

Camping at Salt Creek

There is a decidedly briny theme hereabouts, especially leaning towards fishing. I liked the rope and floats hanging on one of the buildings ...

Fishing artefacts

This place is quite historic as far as Australia having history goes. It's  where oil was first drilled for. Here's a replica drilling rig which was constructed on the site where the well went in ....

Replica oil well

 While I've been composing this Di went for a wander across the road and took a couple of photos of birds in the wetlands ...

Wetlands at Salt Creek

Waterbird heaven

There's a walking trail that goes past a memorial plaque dedicated to Colin Thiele. Once I dragged myself away from the computer I was determined to have a look at it, and I'm glad that I did. Here it is ...

Colin Thiele plaque

I found it so moving that, for those of you who are looking at this post on a device incapable of displaying a high enough resolution to read the quote by Thiele, here are the words he wrote in 1972 about the Coorong ...

The Coorong is spirit - peace of isolation,

regeneration of solitude, therapy of loneliness.

Spirit that man desperately needs.

What depth of connection he must have had to this place! And the hours we've spent cycling through the countryside and had here at Salt River this afternoon have helped us understand why. Di and I will definitely back.

Here's a graphic of our day's journey ...

Wellington to Salt Creek

If you look closely you can see the South Australia/Victoria border not far to the east of us. We won't be there for another few days though, as we're moving southeast at a tangent to the line. 

I know this is starting to sound like a broken record, but it's been another superb day of riding. We had tail winds most of the way, there was little traffic on good roads and the scenery proved nicely diverting. We arrived in the early afternoon after what was a nice easy ride and have had plenty of time to relax.

Tomorrow might not be such a good day. We have 130 or so kilometres to ride and are expecting the wind to come around to the southeast, i.e. directly in our faces. But hey, we'll worry about tomorrow ... tomorrow!

Postscript: I seem to be ever adding bits as they roll in. Collis has treated us to a dinner of Coorong Mullet at the Salt River Roadhouse. Here's a picture that the owner took of we six riders and Collis and Kathy, our able support crew ...

Group meal courtesy of Collis

We all had the mullet and it was delicious, cooked to perfection and served with the best salad I've ever had in a roadhouse.  If you are ever through this way it would be well worth your while to time your traverse through the region so that you can spend an afternoon doing the walk out past Thiele's monument and back on the other side of the creek, then have dinner in the roadhouse.