Great Australian Bight Safaris: COFFIN BAY 4x4 Eyre Peninsula on South Australia’s West Coast

From the water you can take in the vastness of Coffin Bay on the West Coast of Eyre Peninsula as you cruise by miles and miles of spectacular sand dunes. This is Seven Mile Beach right in the very heart of Coffin Bay National Park. But a boat charter will only show you part of this amazing holiday playground. To see it's landlocked treasures you need a four-wheel drive and a someone who knows country. Somebody like Steve Pocock of Great Australian Bight Safaris:

“For about the last three months I've been watching the tides. You have to cut right into the sand hills some days and you've actually got to wait for the tide to drop to get back along it. Also sand blows over the seaweed at times.”

“So you really need to know what you're doing when you're driving?”

“Yes, particularly in the winter time and the Easter tides and big King tides. They're a bit of a problem.”

With Steve Pocock at the wheel you can rest easy. His tour company, Great Australian Bight Safaris has been operating here for 16 years. Soon we pull off Seven Mile Beach and head inland and other hazards present themselves like a mob of emus - In Coffin Bay National Park nature looms large.

“Some of the mobs are pretty big sometimes - I think the best I've ever seen is probably about seventy or eighty. That's getting close to as many emus as you'll see in one location here.”

Nature flourishes because of the isolation of this wild peninsula. On the southern side there’s another spectacular beach to explore and all around there are landmarks with forbidding names like Sudden Jerk Island. Fishermen have a grudging respect for this place and one skipper in particular as Steve explains.

“This is called Sensation Beach and not for the seemingly obvious reason that it's a sensational spot. It has more to do with a maritime mishap in the late sixties.”

The skipper of the tuna boat The Sensation was forced to make an unscheduled stop here for a little longer than anyone expected. Today, old tractor tyres give a hint of the story.

“They're part of a huge low loader that was constructed to try and tow the Sensation to the other side of the Peninsula to relaunch it in calmer waters. Unfortunately mother nature thought better and destroyed the whole lot and this is some of the remnants. The boat got stuck here in 1969 and they only managed to get it off in 1972 but it went back fishing.”

Just inland from Sensation Beach and you come across signs of the Park's early pastoral history. Study horses have had almost one hundred and sixty years to adapt to the harshness of this rocky terrain.

“They were brought here probably in the 1840s by the Hawson family. They were Timor Ponies at that time and one of them was actually used by Edward John Eyre in crossing the Nullabor. And in the 1860s the Mortlock family came here and they started breeding remounts for Sudan and India. And for the First World War and the Middle East.

Many an AIF cavalryman would have ridden a Coffin Bay pony.

“As you can see from the country here these are hardy little fellows and they can stand pretty harsh conditions in late summer when it's so dry.”

We drive across country once owned by William Mortlock the man who would later donate the magnificent Mortlock Library on North Terrace to the people of South Australia and finally make our way to Point Sir Isaac. Matthew Flinders named this rocky headland after one of his patrons back home, Sir Isaac Coffin. This is the opening to the enormous bay which now bears his name - a bay which offers the four wheel drive enthusiast views to distant sandhills and secluded bays where the scrub dips down to the water's edge.

And at the end of the day one last stop to watch and marvel at another visitor to Coffin Bay National Park.

“Oh there Australian Shell Ducks. They move in here in the winter. You can see there's a bit of water lying round here on Big Turf Waterhole and a lot of migratory birds are starting to show up at this time of the year.”

Steve Pocock runs regular tours at very reasonable rates. If you have any further questions please email info@postcards.sa.com.au