Bonnie and Ed's Around-the-world Adventure (Jan-Apr 2015)

Port Lincoln, South Australia. Where? Port Lincoln, South Australia. Never heard of it? Well, with apologies to our dear friends H&C, neither had we until our brief stop there this morning. Of course, we knew it was on the itinerary, but didn't spend a lot of time checking it out before we left since the port stop was only a half day. Well, what a time we had!

Port Lincoln is located in a rather remote area of South Australia as can be seen from the map below.

Port Lincoln, South Australia

It looks like a short hop from Adelaide, but because of the roads in that part of South Australia, it takes about eleven hours by car from Adelaide to Port Lincoln. The ferry takes about 9 hours and it took us about ten hours by our sea route. The area of South Australia to the west of the Eyre Peninsula is the beginning of the Great Nullabor Desert and Great Nullabor Plain, two of the most arid and uninhabited areas on the face of the earth. Port Lincoln was built on fish, specifically, tuna. Today, they ship most of their catch to Asia, what is what is not used domestically. At one time it was even considered as the state capitol; however, as usual the politicians saw the light and made Adelaide the state’s capital. Even today we are told Port Lincoln has more millionaires per capita than any other city in Australia – and the population is only about 14,000!!

OK, on to today’s adventure. Let’s see…for starters, we had wonderful fresh raw oysters and delightful Sauvignon Blanc wine for breakfast. Yes, breakfast. That was followed by some delicious pickled baby octopus, pickled squid, pickled scallops (with the roe still attached), pickled mussels, pickled shrimp, and smoked mussels. YUM!

Our breakfast!! From the left: smoked mussels, pickled shrimp, pickled mussels, pickled scallops, pickled squid, pickled baby octopus.

Our first stop was at the fish place, excuse me, I meant “The Fish Place.” The Fish Place is a combination fish processing plant, retail fish market with artisanal pickled seafood products, and restaurant. We were shown how the fish come in and are either filleted, smoked or, in the case of oysters, rapidly chilled for sale or shucked for consumption.

A gummy shark ready for cutting. Gummy shark is used for fish and chips and as a fried or baked delicacy.

A gorgeous pink snapper (the one without the ball cap). This is a "medium snapper. Many come in to the plant twice this size!

Freshly shucked oysters - the rest of our breakfast!

Yes, that's Bonnie and me all dressed up to tour the fish factory. Prints are available for a reasonable fee...

The short factory tour was followed by the sampling of the oysters and pickled products. We were so sorry that we have no way of keeping anything refrigerated on board or we would have bought a bunch of those products.

After leaving The Fish Place we traveled a short way to Boston Bay Winery on the Eyre Peninsula. Boston Bay is a small winery, only 17 acres, but they produce six different wines and all of them are very good. We know because we would up tasting every one of them – all this before 11:00 AM.

Boston Bay is the home of one of Australia’s celebrity chefs, Tony Ford. Tony was there to greet us and to cook for us. He made an amazing array of small bites to complement the wines. Naturally, yours truly would up with another six-pack.