We'd planned to stay our next night at Port Pirie, on South Australia's York Peninsula, but after rocking into town and doing a lap in about 30 seconds and discovering that the port is more industrial then tourist-friendly, we thought we'd drive a tad more up the coast.
This is when we stumbled upon the paradise that was Port Germein. In the brochure it boasted excellent fishing, a lush and welcoming water side caravan park, coffee shops and kiosks and an impressive record for the longest wooden jetty in the Southern Hemisphere. But alas, it seems the brochure was printed in 1975, because when we arrived, the fish were non-existent, the caravan park had long turned to dust (literally!), all the shops in town had closed down except for the pub and the wooden jetty had lost a few metres due to storm damage.
Too late to go on, we booked in for the night and got our bikes off the back of the car to ride the 1.7km each way along the wooden jetty (in which the water only became visible somewhere in the final 500metres). Yep, a record breaking long wharf. Congrats, Port Germein. At least the brochure got something right. But what really deserves an award and national recognition is how the local fisherman get their boats out of the ocean.
With no boat ramp because of the huge low tides and because the sand bank is so long and flat, these crafty fisherman have invented a crazy cross between a tractor, a giraffe and a turtle i.e. A tractor with really, really long legs. That drives in water. Check it out!
And now watch it in action!
Yours still marvelling at this masterpiece,
Odette
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