A favourite aunt once told me that the boldest way to travel was to head to the furthest point and work your way back. Giant leaps of faith, she declared, were always rewarded, but my plan to reach the very end of the Eyre is hijacked just 40 kilometres off the highway by a sneaky little detour to False Bay.
This first arc of blue at the head of the Spencer Gulf is calm and shallow. I walk to the Point Lowly lighthouse and peer across False Bay where Australian giant cuttlefish gather each winter, flirting and flaunting their ever-changing colours in shimmering mating displays. The spectacle is said to be unforgettable and wild, but this bay’s tranquil summertime guise is equally appealing and the warmth of the sea is nothing short of divine.
On the other side of the headland in nearby Fitzgerald Bay, a unique, 7000-year-old shingle stone shoreline wraps itself around the shallowest of seas. Here, travellers set up shady camps and bob around in the shallows collecting blue swimmer crabs and buckets of razorfish and cockles.
Thriving and surviving on an enviable menu of just-caught salmon and snapper, tommy ruff and kingfish, these campers pay in
