Just one look at the location of this park on the foreshore is enough to know that this will be a good one! The town of Stansbury on Yorke Peninsula is around a two and a half hour drive from Adelaide and to look at a map they sit almost opposite each other with St Vincent Gulf in between.

Originally the area was known as Oyster Bay and the Narangga first people lived mainly on the plentiful oysters and fish. A working oyster farm can be seen in the gulf off the coast from the caravan park. Fishing is still a fruitful pastime too with a jetty and modern boat ramp area only a short drive along the foreshore. The location of the caravan park makes it even easier to go fishing though with it being possible to literally step out of the van and onto the beach in seconds and when the tide is in, you could practically cast from your site. Using tube worms bought from the local grocery / takeaway / tackle and boating supplies shop we tried our luck and were successful in landing whiting from the beach directly in front of the van.

Returned to catch another day.

A session of fishing at the jetty added to the days catch with a small but nonetheless welcome squid to complete a seafood meal for the night. You’ll have company at the beach, jetty or fish cleaning station in the caravan park too with a lot of nosey pelicans visiting and hopeful for any scraps.

The bay is very sheltered and calm making it popular for swimming, kayaking, paddle boarding and any number of other water sports and dolphins are regular visitors. When the tide recedes another bonus is that you can rake for blue swimmer crabs and the tip in South Australia is that they are around in any month with an ‘R’ in it!

The town is small enough to walk to everything and on the foreshore is a terrific children’s playground. Here on Saturdays from 9am from October through to April you can visit the Stansbury seaside markets. This is really worth driving from other towns to visit with a huge range of food, craft, fishing, plants and lots more stalls to see and buy from.

As you walk around town it’s impossible to miss the fabulous art adorning buildings. The locals are obviously and rightly really proud of it too.  While I was taking photos I had a lady give me a tip on where the perfect spot was to stand and get the best perspective of the artwork on the Blue Lime Café and Deli building, she was right. Quite a lot of the artwork was created by a local Stansbury artist, Ann Harris, and scenes depict historical as well as current scenes of the Stansbury lifestyle.

If you’re planning a visit, don’t be in a hurry to move on as this is one place that is easy to settle into for an extended stay.

Cheers

Glenys