24th September to 26th September
After we left Port Lincoln we drove for at least a whole 40 minutes to reach our next destination, Coffin Bay caravan park. Coffin Bay, the town, was originally known as Oystertown, back in its day, before the oyster fisherman pretty much dredged the oyster to near extinction back in 1882. After a few decades of hiatus the town and oyster industry were reignited and it has turned into the Coffin Bay we know today. Whilst Coffin Bay sounds like it has an intriguing history behind its name, alas it doesn’t, it is simply a matter of Mathew Flinders sailing on by back in 1802 and deciding to name the bay and area after his old mate, Isaac Coffin.
Fast forward two centuries and it now currently has an approximate permanent population of 650, which swells to about 4000 over the summer months. Coffin Bay is quite a small town, with the usual pub, general store and post office. In addition it has a chemist, a post office, a yacht club, a great mini golf behind the chemist and an awesome playground on the foreshore.
After we rolled in we did a quick set up and had some lunch before we went for a walk to the oyster sheds to get ourselves some fresh and famous Coffin Bay oysters. As we were walking along the esplanade we saw some older kids on SUP boards, so thought we would look into that tomorrow. After we found and bought our dozen oysters for $12 we walked back to camp and did a bit of housekeeping and laundry. That night for dinner we had surf and turf on the menu, with oysters Kilpatrick, some calamari that Zoe and Nik had caught at September beach and a steak with jacket potatoes and one of Becs salads. It was delicious!!!!
The next day Bec and I had decided to get up early and go for a walk along the ‘Oyster Bay walk’ along the foreshore and bay. Its a 15km walk in total but we only saw a short section of it, it certainly has some awesome holiday houses along the walk and foreshore. After we got back, we spent the morning doing an hour or two of school work whilst Nik went off to play golf at the local golf course.
After lunch we decided to head over to the general store to enquire about the people who were doing the SUP boards yesterday, we assumed that the yacht club may hire them out. But no the yacht club didn’t hire them out, it was an organised school group. However the lady behind the counter then dobbed in the customer standing next to us, as she was the lady who ran the sessions with the school groups. She said they normally only do school groups but if we wanted she could bring some boards down to the foreshore for the kids, talk about right place at the right time!!!!! So we agreed to meet her down at the beach at 3pm and in the meantime we headed to the local mini golf for another round. It was a great little 18 hole mini putt putt and the girls had a ball, however we had to rush through the last couple of holes as it was getting close to the 3pm. With a par of 47, the girls came close, with Bec winning on 95, Abs on 109, Zoe on 125 and Jess on 204. Certainly no future PGA tours in this family!!!!
After putt putt the girls got changed, grabbed their towels and we headed down to the beach for an hour of SUPing. We only hired 2 boards for $40 for the hour and the guy was great, giving the girls a quick run down on the know hows of SUPing. During the hour while the girls were having a ball Nik and I sat and chatted with Peter who had been a local here for 30 years, he was a wealth of information and we learnt a lot about the town, oysters, the community and the legend of the great white sharks that call this open ocean their home and compete with the abalone divers for territory rights!!!
We really enjoyed Coffin Bay, it sounded like a great little community, having something for everyone, quiet bays, fishing, SUPing and a swimming beach, whilst only being a short 40 minute drive from Port Lincoln. So after a short stay in town we pack up the next day to head off to our next Coffin Bay adventure and close destination on our OZLAP……….
