Steve’s Stories - Issue V: Oyster Sex, Bee Bowls and The World's Worst Fisherman
A new state is on the horizon. After spending a month in South Australia, in the next few days I’ll cross the 1200km stretch that is the Nullarbor Plain and enter Western Australia. Mikey has returned to Sydney and so the Jeep moves on as a party of one.
South Australia has been a real adventure. From eating emu and kangaroo in the outback, to the rugged red mountains of the Flinders Ranges and the cliffs and green waters of the Eyre peninsula. I could write pages on the beauty I’ve seen, but it’s the stories of the people and activities that I’ll remember and that is what I want to share here.
And so, I give you Issue V of Steve’s Stories, Oyster Sex, Bee Bowls and The World's Worst Fisherman.
"Where do baby oysters come from?" I asked quietly. Yes, for some reason I had assumed the naive curiosity of a ten year old. I was on an Oyster tour in Coffin Bay and after donning big green waders, I’d shuffled out into the shallows of the bay. Now, sat around a floating wooden bar, my legs dangling in the water, I looked across at Daisy our tour guide.
Daisy was a small, Aussie woman of sixty-odd with a kind face and a wickedly sharp humour. Everyone else on the tour was fervently shucking their oysters when I'd hoped to strike up a quiet conversation with Daisy to learn more about oysters - like a real teacher's pet. Instead of quietly answering my question about where baby oysters come from, Daisy turns to the twenty other people sat around the bar and loudly exclaimed; "so Steve here wants to know about Oyster sex!"...
Once the laughter and my blushes had subsided, Daisy did in fact tell us about Oyster sex.
She told us the story of a young male oyster called Dave…
Dave was one of the lucky few oysters to survive his oyster childhood and as an adult lived peacefully on a rock at the mouth of Coffin Bay. After living alone on his rock for some time, another young oyster moved onto his rock. His name was Ollie. Ollie was also a male oyster and Dave loved having him around.
The rock started to become a popular place for young oysters to hang out and soon many more oysters started moving to the area. There was James and Harvey and Hunter and Matt and Cam. After a few weeks, there were ten oysters all living on this rock. All of them young men. They quickly became good mates, playing footy together, going fishing, talkin rigs and going on occasional camp trips to nearby rocks. They had barbeques and drank beers together. "Boating, Camping, Fishing, it's BCFing fun!" (my aussie mates will get that one).
Life was good for Dave and his mates. But one night, after coming home from a camping trip, Dave started to think about what his life might be like if he were to meet a young female oyster. "This boys life is great”, he thought, “but it might be nice to have a girl around sometimes”. Dave had never had a relationship before. In fact, he'd never even seen a female oyster before. He asked Ollie and James if they had ever seen a female oyster. "Nope, never mate". This went on for weeks, Dave’s longing for a romantic relationship deepening each day.
And then Dave had a weird but wonderful idea... What if Dave turned into a female oyster? He could still live with all the boys, enjoying the BCFing life, but would also get to have a relationship and start a little oyster family.
And so, Dave turned into Davina.
Davina cosyed up with Ollie and they started a little Oyster family. Soon, the other lads on the rock were getting jealous of Davina's new life and decided to make the change themselves. And so James, Harvey, Hunter and Matt all turned into female oysters. They "shucked" up (sorry, I couldnt help this pun) with the other lads on the rock and lived wholesome, happy lives, raising families whilst still going on camping trips, drinking beers and fishing with their best mates.
And that’s how I learned about oyster sex.
McLaren Point was the most beautiful campsite I've ever been to. It’s deep in Lincoln National park, at the end of a five mile 4wd track that bumped and rocked me all over the place. I arrived in the afternoon and the sun was glistening on the water. I flew the drone and saw the patchy greens and blues and blacks (seaweed) of the bay. There was noone around for miles and it was the perfect place to go for a dip in the nip. Yano, if you were into that thing.
Anyway, I'm a bit of a planner, so before I went into the park I looked up some info. In general the reviews were great, but there were some weird warnings about bees. Apparently, the bees in the park can swarm at certain times and be a real nuisance. Hmm, not ideal I thought. Then I saw a comment offering some help for keeping the bees away; "make sure to leave out a bowl of water for the bees" it said. Handy solution I thought.
So when I had set up camp I dutifully set out a small bowl with some water in it and then headed off for a snorkel. I swam for almost an hour following fish into their rocky hiding holes and diving along the sandy bottom, watching the sand get kicked up as each small wave rolled in.
When I eventually wandered back to my campsite however, I was greated by some sort of hellscape. A gigantic swarm of bees had completely enveloped my campsite. The air vibrated with their buzzing, their black and yellow swarm making it hard to distinguish my car from the bushes behind. They were fucking EVERYWHERE! Thousands of the bastards.
What the fuck? I thought to myself. How did my bowl of water not work? I looked for it on the ground but initially couldn't see it. Then I saw a dense mass of bees on the ground. All the bees seemed to be pulled towards this spot, like the gravity of a black hole pulling everything towards its centre. And then I saw it. At the centre of this black hole of bees, lay the bowl of water...
Fack! What I thought was helpful advice, was actually a very well played practical joke. It was the water that had attracted all these bees in the first place!
In fairness, it was pretty funny and I could do nothing but respect the long game of the anonymous online commenter, investing in a joke whose punchline he would never hear.
I eventually managed to wrestle my way through the mass of bees to the bowl and threw it as far as I could, the water splashing out with it. And after a few minutes the bees were gone... I guess you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet.
I must be the world's worst fisherman. On Almonta Beach I spoke to a couple who had just caught fifty salmon off the beach. In fact, they had become so bored with the quantity of salmon they were catching, that they started to fish for sharks using the salmon they had caught as bait (Aussies, they're built different). I fished the same beach, in the same spot, with the same rig, for two hours. And didn't get a single bite...
When we were in Apollo Bay, the local information centre told us we were "guaranteed to catch fish" when we got to Cape Otway. We just needed to “go down Aire River and just before the bridge, take the sandy road to the left until you reached the fishing platform”. After four hours, myself and Mikey agreed there must be a different definition of "guaranteed" in this part of the world. As the light disappeared, we stared at the water beneath the fishing platform and watched helplessly as we saw fish swim towards our line, take a polite bite of one end of our bait, take a look at the hook, shake their heads and swim off again.
In Lincoln National Park, I saw a giant school of King George Whiting swim slowly through the water, just ten yards in front of me. Fuck yes, I thought. I cast out, a few feet in front of them, with the exact lures I had been told to use in the local information centre. And then I watched as every last one of them turned up their noses at my lure and swam on. I’m starting to wonder if these information centres are a front for fish conservation centres…
I’m not sure what’s worse, to be able to see the fish and have them nibble your bait and taunt you, or to never have any sight or action at all.
Anyway, I'm still determined to catch an Australian Salmon, but with my time in South Australia coming to an end soon, the window is closing. If I can get one, perhaps then I can finally shed my title of the world’s worst fisherman.
That’s all for now. If you enjoyed it, drop your email below and I’ll email you each new issue.
See ya next week,
Steve
Notable mentions:
Prairie Hotel & Outback Lodge (Parachilna); for a feral mixed grill of Kangaroo, Emu, Goat and Camel. It’s not just a novelty feed, it’s actually super tasty.
Craddock Hotel: Buy a beer in the pub and camp out the back for free. We bought six, and a feed. If you’re near the Flinders Range or Adelaide, you have to go here for a night. It’s run by Dave, Amy and their young family and you can sit at the bar and feel at home before you’ve taken your first sip of cold beer. The food is big and satisfying. Visits from the hands and shearers from the local sheep stations means this place can get loose.
Colton Bakehouse: open at 8:30ish and closed when they run out, this hole in the wall offers freshly baked bread and fruit buns on the road between Elliston and Venus Bay. It’s an honesty box system so take what you want and leave the cash behind. I ate two buns then pulled in two minutes down the road to get a third from the boot.
North Star Hotel: I’m getting obsessed with Australia’s country pubs and The North Star Hotel ranks up there among the best. The ceilings are high and the thick limestone walls make this a cave of calmness with great food and a nice mix of local and tourist vibes.
Red Cliff’s Campground: camp for free on the cliffs, just outside Tumby Bay. Walk down the cliffs for a dip to freshen up in the morning.
Trip Stats:
Days on the road: 55
Distance covered: 7,421km
Time spent driving: 137hours
Camps: 30
Snakes encountered: 1