Chapter 14: Port Lincoln and Shark Week
We head to Port Lincoln National Park at the bottom of the Eyre Peninsula. This will be the first of several days without access to external showers, bins and flush toilets.
This means that of course it coincides with what girls today call Shark Week. If you’re a man and you’re thinking this means the week dedicated to the protection of sharks then… think about it a little more.
So now I need to work out the logistics of dealing with my situation in my current circumstances while lamenting that I’ll be entering my last year of my forties next week and Shark Week STILL won’t leave me the hell alone.
Cowell
On the way, we stop in at Cowell where it appears the median age of residents is around 70. It has lots of limestone buildings and a local beer called Pirate Life that I find vaguely amusing. In an effort to seem young and hip, Cowell has also built a waterpark, this time with two slides and a water play area.
The kids must try this one out so T and I leave them to it and head off for a walk along the waterfront. There’s obviously been money invested to make the place more appealing to fishers and families and it kind of works. The coffee is nice too.
After Cowell, I get to drive so I crank up the music as loud as I dare. Everyone has their freshly charged headphones on and personalised audio selections so I sing along to my own while debating with myself whether “Smells like Teen Spirit” really is the song of my generation as recently voted by the New York Times or is it “Blister in the Sun”? I decide it’s Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” because Taylor Swift’s success makes Alanis’ music far more relevant today.
Somewhere Kurt Cobain is rolling in his grave and thinking whatever, never mind.
Port Lincoln
Port Lincoln turns out to be a well-kept, largish town reminiscent of Hobart, with its long curving bay. It’s got a mix of old limestone houses and grand waterfront mansions built by members of a thriving seafood industry centred on everything from oysters to tuna.
Apparently it has more millionaires per square kilometre than any other town in Australia. This is not surprising given the price of a plate of oysters.
We’ve promised the kids a congratulatory ice-cream for surviving the first week of the trip so I make my way to the waterfront.
Here the town has helpfully provided caravan parking near an ice-cream shop and opposite a beautiful bronze statue of Makybe Diva, a very successful racehorse that is one of only three I’ve actually heard of.
We eat our ice-creams and take pictures with the horse statue before heading to Port Lincoln National Park, our camping destination for the next two nights.
Port Lincoln National Park
The National Park is a peninsula jutting out into the bay with a view over to the town. It’s quite breezy and the beach rather shallow and weedy but it looks pretty from a distance.
The toilets are quite new, drop-style but unfortunately white. This means they are stained by countless shits from I don’t know how many people. This is the same for all drop toilets of course but at least when they’re black you can pretend you don’t see it.
Fortunately, they don’t smell much but like all drop toilets they have no sanitary facilities so I need to pack out used tampons in ziplock bags. Weird how I can get to this age and still be grossed out by the inconvenience of my normal bodily functions.
That evening, we try and get the kids to play an extended game of Catan but we can’t remember how to play this version and they are too tired to be bothered learning, so we pack them off to bed.
In the morning, I finish my book (Liane Moriarty’s Apples Never Fall which I found to be like the other books of hers I’ve read — easy to read, sometimes with great observations, vaguely annoying characters and disappointing at the end) and we head off for a bushwalk.
G is frustrated it’s too windy to get the kayak out but we reassure him there will be plenty of time for that later. At least we hope so because at this point, we’re just glad it’s not raining yet.
The walk is pleasant and the kids don’t complain too much as long as we talk or spell Melbourne train stations (G) and Countries of the World (A).
On our return to the campsite, we discover someone has cleaned all the shit off the toilets.
I feel inordinately grateful to this poor person for doing this god-awful job and providing us with this little piece of civility.
The kids play at the beach until A accidentally whacks G in the nose. G screams like he is a victim of an actual shark rather than my metaphorical one. He’s always had a streak of melodrama in him so he proceeds to milk it for all its worth and demands the first shower.
By the time T is in the van shower it appears the drain is blocked. So now it’s my Shark Week and we potentially have no shower.
Great. Just great.
