DAY 8 – PORT LINCOLN – COFFIN BAY NATIONAL PARK

What a great day as the picture shows.

I went to see my friendly Land Rover dealer first thing this morning who agreed that the problem is the right front air bag, not the compressor which has been replaced twice and has ordered the parts which will arrive on Monday so the schedule is being rearranged slightly but this is a great place to have to spend a few days.

He was very entertaining in that he was asking me whether, when I spoke to my local Land Rover dealer about the maintenance of the car, whether I got to speak to the mechanic or only spoke to “a man in a suit”. He was not very complementary about dealership service advisers.

We then went to the local seafood processing centre where we obtained some very appetising looking prawns and snapper for tea. It was a supermarket of fresh seafood and we will be back there tomorrow. They had small fish which looked remarkably like pilchards but which were labelled sardines. We later saw them being “vacuumed” off the boat as the picture shows.

For lunch, we went to Coffin Bay where we enjoyed fresh local oysters in the very extensive Coffin Bay National Park. It is spectacular but unfortunately we couldn’t enjoy what I expect would be a highlight in that some of the tracks head out over substantial sand dunes but I doubt very much that the dodgy suspension could handle it and extracting a Range Rover with collapsed suspension from a sand dune would not be pretty.

I have succumbed to temptation and have booked a dive with the Great Whites on Sunday. Hopefully they will turn up. If they do, I expect to get some pretty spectacular photos. The weather forecast is looking good.

Tomorrow we will be checking out another nearby National Park. It also has spectacular sand dune driving. Will I be tempted? We’ll see.