New York, Paris, Rome, London, Port Neill

Sara, squid hunter

Messy business, cleaning squid.

We were hooked up and ready to leave Port Augusta when a woman came over for a chat. She gave the kids Sköda caps from the recent Tour Down Under bike race, and suggested we stop in at Port Neill on the way to Port Lincoln. One night has become four.

This place is lovely. Fishing cottages around the bay. A long jetty, and an old pub. After setting up, Sara and I had beers on the foreshore while the kids swam and monkey barred. The grassy site is welcome after the dirt and dust of the outback, there are plenty of fish in the bay (allegedly), and the neighbours...well there's Tony.

Fresh caught whiting, and Millie (Tony's daughter)

Tony is a farmer from Greve, a small town about an hour away. He's been coming here since he was a kid. He has two gorgeous daughters, Millie and Tori, and his wife Fiona is pregnant with number three. Tony loves to fish. Tony re-rigged all our rods on the first night, donating squid jigs. Tony fixed Ollie's and Ned's reels. Tony has kept us fed by providing us, the caravan park's charity case, with squid and whiting when we caught nothing. Tony convinced Ivy to go snorkelling and jump off the pier. Tony caught an abalone for Ivy. Tony taught Sara how to prepare a squid. Tony had a pre-season with the Port Adelaide footy club. Tony is a ripper bloke. But if anyone else starts a sentence with “Tony said...”, I'm gone.

We've spent the time here fishing, swimming and generally just being calm. It's such a nice rest after the non-stop movement of the previous fortnight. No surf, but a bloke called Kingo told me to stop at Elliston on the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula for that. In the mean time, we'll try and catch some fish for ourselves. Ivy caught a squid yesterday and was justifiably proud, the rest of us have had nothing. If it wasn't for the generosity of Tony, Stewie, Rob, Greg, and some other bloke who has a habit of catching 15 squid a day, we'd be on bread and water.

The boys have come back from the beach after looking for worms to use as bait. They didn't find any. They want to know where Tony is because Tony said they would be under the seaweed, and that you can dig them up easily, and Tony said we'd need about thirty, and we'd catch heaps of yellow fin whiting just off the beach, and Tony said yellow fin whiting are the best eating fish in the world, and Tony said there were heaps of them at the surf beach near the rocks, and Tony said we could fish for them after lunch. So we went fishing after lunch and caught 9 whiting big enough to eat, and about 20 who weren't. Bugger it. If Tony said it, bank it.

H