Wandering around Port Lincoln

One of our favorite things to do in a new port is to wander around … sometimes aimlessly. It's a good way to figure out the lay of the land and to spot unique aspects of the town that we might not usually see. For instance, if we hadn't been wandering around in Port Lincoln, we might not have seen the Flinders Theatre … built in 1929 … and still operating as a movie theater or the Flinder's Arch on Tasman Terrace. Matthew Flinders visited Port Lincoln around this time of year in 1802 and actually named it and the bays around here  

The Port Lincoln downtown area is not very large, so getting lost was not a serious concern. We beached the dinghy at the friendly Port Lincoln Yacht Club then walked up Tasman Terrace along the shore of Boston Bay. Nine of Cups was looking pretty fine anchored in the bay and we couldn't resist taking a few pix.

We spotted a life-sized bronze statue of a horse along the foreshore which, of course, piqued our interest. Tony Santic, the owner of Makybe Diva, a three-time Melbourne Cup winner, is a Croatian fisherman from Port Lincoln and the town commissioned the bronze in honor of what the brochures call his “supermare”.

We noted that the town jetty seemed a popular place for local fishermen to throw out a line. There was also a protected swim area since the area is known for its great white shark population.

There was no dearth of opportunities to cage dive with great white sharks, swim with tunas, swim with sea lions and swim with dolphins. We had no inclination to do this. Hmm …. get into a cage, flash some bait and wait for great white sharks to come visiting AND pay $500AUD/pp for the pleasure. We find other ways to get our adrenaline rushes.

We chose to walk up Adelaide Street for no particular reason other than it connected with Liverpool Street which seemed to be the home of all the supermarkets in town. A tree along the street was teeming with squawking birds and as luck would have it, they were ring-necked parrots aka the Port Lincoln parrot, a new bird to tick off our list. I wasn't quick enough with the camera to get a good pic, but I nicked one from Wiki to introduce you to this handsome bird.

There are three good sized supermarkets here, all along Liverpool Street, each offering mostly the same stuff, but all offering just a few things different. Woolworths (aka Wooly's here and nothing to do with the old Woolworth's 5 & 10, if you're old enough to remember that) had a free Vegemite poster with each Vegemite purchase. Wow! Unfortunately, we had sufficient supply of Vegemite on board from our last tasting, so we missed out on the freebie. They also offered Kanga-Bangas … we hesitated on this one, but eventually decided to give it a pass as well.

All in all, we have found Port Lincoln to be a pleasant little town with all the amenities we could ask for, a great anchorage and friendly people. Tomorrow, we meet some new friends for lunch and we're looking forward to it.