The Clare Valley and Eyre Peninsula

Date of Adventure about 13 January to about 24 January 2025

This entry is just to clear up some of the time and to cover a couple of interesting places. At the end of my time in the Flinders Ranges I had a tire with a significant leak. I put on the spare and decided to go to Burra to get it repaired, mainly because the tire shop in Burra is a BF Goodrich dealer and I was a little worried that they’d have to replace the tire. Since my all-terrain tires are BFG it seemed like the safest thing. And, I had to go to the post office in Clare to pick up a package anyway. Those towns are about 5 km apart. I ended up camping in the town park in a little village called Farrell Flats. It was a great place to camp. Ten dollars donation per night, a clean bathroom, and lots of free, high quality water. Among other things this gave me the chance to flush the water tank on the Troopy and refill. I seem to have lost some of the photos from this short time but I’ve got a few to make this sensible.

Clare is a winemaking area. There are probably over 30 small wineries in the valley. Most of them are family, boutique wineries. I spent 5 days, visiting one winery per day. The cost of a wine tasting was $10 and it got waved if you bought a bottle of wine. Here’s one of the pictures that survived my loss.

Between Farrell Flats and the town of Clare is a small village called Mintaro. It’s really scenic with old stone buildings and someone has build a maze and topiary. I didn’t visit the maze because it was closed most of the time I was in the area. So, here’s the town of Mintaro and the video gives some idea of what the region is like.

After taking it easy in Farrell Flats for a while I decided to tour down the Eyre peninsula. It’s supposed to be an area of nice beaches and great seafood. Most of the drive was a little disappointing because the wind blew like crazy. All of the little towns along the route, down the east coast and up the west coast of the peninsula, have cool looking hotels and pubs. This has been pretty common in my travels.

I spent a couple of nights in a really pleasant campground in Port Lincoln and got to eat a little seafood in the restaurants. Port Lincoln had a really nice feel to it. It seemed that most of the Eyre peninsula is farmed in grain. I was told wheat and lentils. All of the fields were fallow. I was told they would start planting in about 2-3 months. This is all dryland farming.

All of the grain means that there are elevators in almost every town. Some even get painted up.

Port Lincoln is obviously a shipping point for a lot of the grain. Check the huge elevators right on the edge of town. And the green piping that must be used to deliver the grain to ships at the pier. Everything was quiet while I was there.

Leaving Port Lincoln, I drove up the west coast of the peninsula and spent a night camped on the bluffs overlooking a beach. There were several other campers in the area but plenty of room. It is a real scramble to get from the top of the cliffs down to the beach but it’s obvious that some fishermen do it.

Driving on I came across yet another abandoned building. It’s been interesting how many old buildings, from the mid 1800’s into the 1900’s, I’ve come across. I can’t stop at every one but some are just interesting. Here’s an old stopping off point along the road.

That takes care of the interim time. Next set, heading across the Nullarbor to Western Australia.