Tumby Bay

Our Journey so far - 833 km down - only 1775km to go!!!

We have done quite well on our journey so far only using one caravan park since we headed off from Mildura last Monday morning.  From our night in the Clare Caravan Park on Wednesday night we have survived 4 days freedom camping and still had a bit of battery and water left on board.  We love freedom camping, however the thought of hooking in to power and having some luxuries on hand (like a heater overnight) was very tempting again and had to be done to replenish everything.

We were intending to head straight through to Port Lincoln, however we wanted to stop off and have a look at Tumby Bay on the way through, and well the place looked really nice so we decided to stay!  We have parked up in a caravan park on the beach front, done a whole lot of washing, replenished the battery and the water tanks, shampooed the dog……and then decided to stay on for another night.

Tumby Bay is a lovely little township and looks like its expanding quite quickly as there are quite a few very affluent subdivisions being built in various areas. Apparently the last census showed there are only 1200 residents here with a lot of homes only with one person living in them as they were retired couples and one partner has since died.  There isn’t much of a shopping area and the local IGA’s prices are astronomical – unfortunately we had no choice but to pay them as our fridge and pantry was nearly empty. 

There is a hospital here which sits right on the waterfront – as we drove past today there were patients sitting on their beds eating their lunch looking out their windows across to the sea – how lovely would that be!  A quick internet search told me there are no births here and pretty limited presentations and admissions – 318 general acute admissions in the last year!  I guess they aren’t short of staff then…

The beach here runs along a vast area, however there is a lot of seaweed which spoils the look of the water and beach as it washes up.  There are some areas weed free and the water is lovely and clear.  We went down to a secluded area of the beach today and found a lovely weed free area – so we all waded out.  It was pretty shallow so the water was lovely and warm in spots – its not quite full on swimming temperature yet.

Here are some photos of Tumby Bay

the new marina subdivision area - lovely

the long jetty stretching out behind Mal

our set up at the Tumby Bay caravan park

Tomorrow we are going to head off with a stop off in Port Lincoln to see an old work colleague from Brisbane, then find another nice freedom camping spot along the beach.