Another incredible day to add to our list! Today we treated like it was Sunday (oh that’s right, it is 🙂 ) and got up when we felt like it. After a relaxed breakfast and updating ourselves with the news of the day we headed off on our expedition within the Innes National Park.

We called in to every available coastal viewing spot as they came up. Moody photos today as it was cloudy (but not rainy) for most of the day. After a few cliff views, we stopped at the Cape Spencer Lighthouse. The lighthouse itself wasn’t particularly picturesque, but it was interesting as we could see two other lighthouses from it. One at Althorpe Island, and the other at West Cape (which we visited later). By far my favourite part of this stop were the limestone cliffs in both directions.

We then visited the ruins of the gypsum mining town of Inneston. This mining town was established in the late 1800’s to mine the local gypsum. There were ruins of the mining tramways and trolleys, factories, bakery etc. The town had 130 families living there at its prime. The product was exported via the jetty at Stenhouse Bay (last night’s venue for us). Mining was discontinued in the late 1930’s, however a really interesting building we saw was the Bellco coloured chalk factory. Chalk is a by product of the gypsum mining and the coloured chalk was made at this location and supplied schools and shops until the 1980s. I remember having this chalk on my home chalk board when I was a kid.

Next stop was Ethel Beach. The Ethel was wrecked in 1904 in bad weather. The steel hull is still visible on the beach (depending on the sand level). We were lucky today that the hull and boiler were very visible.

Next stop was West Cape Lookout, where the other mainland lighthouse that we could see this morning is located. By this stage it was 2pm and we were looking forward to grabbing a quick lunch at the food van we knew was there. We didn’t realise it shut at 2 and we arrived in time to see the owner connecting the van to his car and driving off 🙁 . Regardless, we walked to the lookout and enjoyed the view. We then moved to Pondalowie Bay lookout where we saw the cutest little kangaroo fossicking in the wildflowers, followed by a 2km walk to the rock pools at Shell Beach.

We were heading back towards camp with me taking a turn at the wheel when we came across a dad emu with 5 little chicks strolling along the road. Huge excitement for me as we were meant to have emus at our beachside camp here but all we’ve seen is their dung….. the babies are striped and so cute.

We arrived back to the van by 4pm absolutely starving and Bob suggested an early meal at the Marion Bay Tavern as a lunch/dinner and an attempt to get us back to eating meals at the right time of day from tomorrow. So off we went at 430 and enjoyed our meal at 530 – which was lucky because the tavern was booked out for the evening.

Tomorrow we move on again and will be exploring the eastern side of the peninsula for a couple of days. Weather is looking to take a dive so that will feed into what we decide to do.