Innes National Park - Glenelg SA

Innes National Park comprises of 9,232 ha of natural coastal vegetation with a range of habitat types including coastal heath lands, mallee woodlands, open grasslands, samphire flats, sheoak woodlands, salt lakes, beaches and rocky cliff lines. We paid our $7.50 access fee & $5 per night camp fee and headed towards Shell Beach, we were told that it was a nice camping area by the manager of the Marion Bay caravan park but we were disappointed after bumping down a corrugated road to find that the site was small and excluded caravans, so we turned around headed back to Cable Beach camp area, here there were plenty of sites but not large enough to put out the awning. We unhitched the Effy and went for a drive and checked out the sites, Inneston Historic town site was interesting, there are three lighthouses in the park at Cape Spencer, West Cape and Peter Island and the coastline has claimed many ships, the wreck of the Ethel is the park's most famous wreck which came to grief in 1904 when it was driven ashore during a large storm off the coast, the remains of the ship is on Ethels Beach, which is also the final resting place of the boiler of the SS Ferret.










The 2nd day we were there we decided to move camp down to Stenhouse Bay, closer to the Jetty. There are families of Emu's walking around the camp area and fittingly the beach is called Little Emu Beach.



The day bought rain, constant drizzling rain, enough to come down so that we were able to catch 80 - 100 litres in a bucket placed under the awning. With the change in weather it wasn't a lot of fun so we went for another drive checking out a few other places in the park. During the day Vickie complained about her eye being blurred and we thought it best to get it checked out by a Doctor so we moved on.

We took the dirt road along the coast, checking out the small coastal towns and jetties like Foul Bay, Sturt Bay, refueled at Edithburg at a reasonable $120.9 per litre and checked out one of the cemetery's at Pink Lake, drove through more towns & jetty's at Stansbury & Port Vincent all the time checking out likely camp sites for the night. It wasn't until we came across Port Julia that we found a place that we could camp, the cost was $6 per night or $25 a week. We were pleasantly surprised to see Spydor & Robyn's BT set up as we thought they would still be around the Flinders Rangers. A quick catch up with what they & we had been up to and then a walk down to the jetty to see if there were any squid about. I had two jigs out and i could see the squid coming up and touching the jig but they weren't silly enough to latch on, it was nearing 'happy hour' so back to the van and more chat with our neighbours.

We had made an appointment to see a Dr at Ardrossan which was 28k's North of Point Julia and drove in to see him, Those of you who know Vickie well will know that she stresses out when it comes to visits to Doctor's, always thinking the worst and preferring not to know. So when Dr Babu met her Vickie was her usual blubbery self with me left to do most of the explaining. He took her blood pressure and it was extremely high, 186 over something, he was concerned with that and explained how high blood pressure can cause bleeds in the small vessels behind the eye, or maybe even a retina detachment. He took a blood sample and asked us to go away and come back in two hours time, we thought this was to enable the test to be looked at but he actually wanted her back to take another blood pressure test, this time Vickie was more relaxed and the Sister took a reading and it was back down to a normal level. Proof that she does stress out with Dr's visits.

Dr Babu wrote out a referral and told us to go straight to the Adelaide Eye Hospital the next morning to be checked out by the experts, so it was back to camp and pack up and head to Adelaide and stay at our daughter Erin's place at Glenelg. The visit to the hospital was a long day of waiting and after nearly 5 hours we left knowing that Vickie had possibly had a warning of a stroke or diabetes induced bleed, unfortunately nothing can be done to remedy the eyesight to what it was but it should improve over time. She now needs to see a local GP and have some further tests done and in 6 weeks time go back to the Eye Hospital for another check.

Vickie is handling the situation well, obviously we are both hoping for the best outcome and only time will tell. We heard the very sad news that a friend has been diagnosed with terminal cancer so everything is put into perspective after hearing that.