18 February 2014 Coffin Bay

We woke around 8:30am, we are getting really good at this late start thing. 🙂

After we finally got going for the day, I went out and washed the car. There are some bad points to remember when asking for a site with shade, this normally involves trees, and here that means LOTS of birds (parrots and galahs) sitting in trees doing what birds do!

With our newly washed car we set  out to explore this small village. Coffin Bay has a resident population of 650, but that expands to 4000 during the summer school holidays. There are so many vacant holiday homes here, many still for rent, but a lot just seem to be locked up until the owners  want to come down here. There is a real mix of housing, from superb rustic old style beach/fishing shacks on the waterfront to flash shiny new modern style homes and terraces. Personally I like the sign just out from the caravan park, advertising Land and shed deals from $119,500! I mean, a mans gotta have a shed!!

We started our town tour by going up to a lookout to take in the whole of the town and bay. Unfortunately it was pretty overcast today and the view was very limited! We will have to go back before we leave .Then drove down to the main boat ramp in town, and arrived just in time to see about 4 oyster boats come in with their harvest, the boats each bring back about 100 to 150 cages/screens of oyster (I am pretty sure that’s what I got told) and each cage/screen holds a few dozen oysters, so it’s all pretty big business.  We then drove around the foreshore and passed many of those house I mentioned before, and one beach shack that got Deb’s attention. It was about 5m from the high tide mark and looked like it had maybe 2 rooms, and was so rustic! 🙂

We then drove to the oyster processing area of town and particularly to one that sold to the public. We arrived just after the morning harvest was delivered. I ordered a dozen shucked oyster, I had to wait a little as they unloaded a few cages of oyster off the boat that had just been driven in on a trailer on the back of a truck. They poured the contents of the cage onto a workbench in front of me and the guy shucked them on the spot! They really don’t get any fresher from a supplier   $8 a doz shut, or $12 a doz shucked.

We took our freshly shucked oysters down the main wharf in town and sat watching the world go by eating our oysters, delicious. (yes, I actually enjoyed them natural!! 🙂  ) From there went back to the CP and bought a couple of postcards to send to our grandchildren.   Not sure when they will arrive there was no indication on the post box when it is emptied!  Hopefully they will arrive before we do on Monday!!

I headed off fishing in my kayak at about 2pm, with a watch on and vowing to be back by 5pm  🙂 . Deb said if I was catching fish stay out until 6, if I wanted to. What a woman!!  🙂

The weather wasn’t the best while I was out there, lots of wind and gusts of light rain showers. I finished up back by 5:30pm with ½ doz Tommies. While I was out an Oyster boat on the way to the oyster farms went passed me(about 15m away) doing around 20km/h in a 4km/h zone. I wasn’t happy, the motors were so loud I heard them coming, there wasn’t any point in yelling at them, they wouldn’t have heard me, so I resorted to sign language. If they saw my signing I am sure they would have got the idea I wasn’t happy with them! 🙁

Bacon and eggs for tea tonight, just to get a bit unhealthy, lol.  It was really delicious. Cake and coffee/tea to finish another great day.