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The Eyre Peninsula Attractions
Special Moment: Swimming with sea creatures
The Eyre Peninsula offers plenty of ways to get up close and personal to the wildlife, but nothing beats swimming with wild sea lions. The puppy dogs of the sea, these endangered marine mammals are insatiably curious, and love to play. The sea lions are never fed, and all interaction is initiated by the animals. They come to you. But the more you interact with them, the more they like it -- after all, no one likes a boring playmate who just stares! The more you splash and duck dive, the more they respond, often mimicking your actions, circling when you do, diving and surfacing with you. Believe me, making eye contact with a wild animal in its own habitat, on its own terms, is an experience you'll not soon forget.
Ocean Eco Tours, between Streaky Bay and Port Lincoln (tel. 08/8626 5017; www.bairdbay.com), offers half-day trips swimming with sea lions at Baird Bay, and depending on weather, swimming with the resident pod of bottlenose dolphins. You must be able to swim and parents or guardians must accompany children under 12. The best season is from September through to May. It costs A$140 for adults or A$70 for kids, and wet suits are included.
The Port Lincoln-based Adventure Bay Charters (tel. 0488/428 862; www.adventurebaycharters.com.au) runs trips to the colony at Hopkins Island, around a 90-minute cruise from Port Lincoln; the half-day tour includes a swim in a tuna farm afterward. It costs A$195 for adults, kids A$145. (A separate 2-hr. tuna-farm tour is available for A$95 adults, A$65 kids.)
Both sea lion tours are excellent, but the Baird Bay tour is a little more personal, has a stronger conservation ethic, and you'll learn a lot more about the animals than you do on the more commercialized Adventure Bay trip.
Whatever you do, don't visit the replica of the biggest white pointer shark ever caught by rod and reel (a very scary 5m/16 ft. long and 1,520kg/3,344 lb. heavy) before you take the plunge. The shark, which was caught in the waters off Streaky Bay in 1990, is on show at the Shell Roadhouse in Streaky Bay. If you are interested in getting a closer look at a real, live great white shark, you can go shark cage diving with Calypso Star Charters (tel. 08/8682 3939; www.sharkcagediving.com.au), based in Port Lincoln. It's a full-day trip and costs A$495, and you don't have to be a certified diver to do it. You may have to be certifiably crazy however, and I must admit I haven't quite worked up the courage yet to do it.
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- Cooking Class
Coffin Bay Explorer
You'll learn everything you've ever wanted to know about the oyster-growing business and more than likely see dolphins as well on this 3-hour cruise around the waters of Coffin Bay. It passes oyster beds (yes, you'll get to try some!) and the national park. - Park/Garden
Coffin Bay National Park
You'll need a four-wheel drive to explore the best bits, but it's well worth spending a day or two in this gorgeous coastal park if you have one. You'll also need an air compressor to reinflate your tires, as most of the tracks are sandy and require a low tire pressure to avoid… - Cooking Class
Elliston's Great Ocean Drive
This 12km (7 1/2-mile) cliff-top drive just north of Elliston is, in a word, stunning. Every 2 years (the next year is 2013), the Sculpture on the Cliffs festival transforms the coastline into a huge outdoor sculpture gallery between March and June. Some of the sculptures remain on… - Tour
Gawler Ranges Wilderness Safaris
The Gawler Ranges is one of South Australia's best-kept secrets, one that even most Aussies don't know about. Rough, rugged, and remote, the weathered ranges were formed more than 1.5 billion years ago by a massive volcanic eruption, leaving behind a dramatic landscape of rock… - Park/Garden
Lincoln National Park
This is another national park that really needs a 4WD to explore the best of it. Highlights include the massive wind-sculpted sand dunes, pounding surf, and limestone cliffs of Memory Cove, a pretty beach protected by two headlands that was named by explorer Matthew Flinders as a… - Landmark
Murphy's Haystacks
The "haystacks" are actually a hilltop outcrop of large granite boulders with walkways between them. Local legend has it that an Irish agricultural expert advocated that to produce good hay, farmers should harrow their land. While traveling past in a coach, he noticed the rocks… - Natural Attraction
Point Labatt Sea Lion Colony
The Australian sea lion is one of the world's rarest seals; less than 12,000 survive in the wild today. The sea-lion colony at Point Labatt is the only permanent breeding colony on mainland Australia (all other colonies occur on offshore islands) and it's one of the few places where… - Natural Attraction
Talia Sea Caves
Granite and limestone cliffs here were hollowed out by the sea to form caves. "The Woolshed" is a large cavern carved into the cliff, and there are steps down to the cliff base. Or check out "The Tub," a large, craterlike hole in the cliff around 30m (98 ft.) deep and 50m (164 ft.)… - Tour
Triple Bay Cruises
Watch the sunset while sipping local wine and sampling local seafood (tuna sashimi, Coffin Bay oysters, and other local delights) on a 2-hour Twilight Cruise of Boston Bay. Skipper Peter Dennis knows just about everything about the local seafood and fishing industries, and lots of…
