Rogues Point is 81km from Adelaide, a few kms south of Ardrossan and about 2 hours drive from Adelaide. Rogues Pt and nearby James Well are examples of the typical quiet weekender seachange retreats scattered along the Yorke Peninsula coastline
We are lucky enough to be able to stay in a friend’s shack built right on the beach 60 years ago by his family. This is a sunrise view from the verandah of the shack. The sun is rising over Adelaide.
The Walk the Yorke Walking Trail passes through Rogues Pt. It is about 500km long, beginning at Pt Wakefield extending down along the east coast to Innes National Park, up the west coast and finishing at Moonta Bay. There are 10 topographical maps, $9.95 each or the set for $90 but the latest tourist map we picked up has the trail marked on it and is probably all you really need. The second picture is a view of the walk south of Rogues Pt. The dark line in the distance is Black Pt.
There are lots of quiet beaches with plenty of opportunities to practice your photography. You may want to go fishing but I would suggest using a bigger boat than this little tinny!!
I prefer raking for Blue Crabs at low tide. I can remember walking across the mudflats at Saint Kilda with my grandfather at about 8 years of age going “Dabbing”, as he called it. We used metal hoops covered in chicken wire, not our modern crab-rakes. This is what the well-dressed Crabber wears. As you can see, I don’t like getting sunburnt. You don’t need to wade out very far to get a feed. A double header, here is a male clutching a female. The bag limit is 20 crabs per person. You can have a fire below the high tide mark and cook the catch in seawater on the beach. This is the stainless-steel tumbler from an old washing machine. They are red when they are ready to eat. My grandfather wouldn’t let me eat crabs until they were cold but now, I start eating them as soon as they are cool enough to grab hold of. Blue Crabs are much sweeter than Crayfish!! Not a bad way to spend a weekend. This is one of my better catches but there are much bigger things out there and sadly Ardrossan experienced the stranding of some real giants of the sea a few years ago.
On Monday 8 December 2014 a pod of 7 sperm whales was stranded at low tide on Parara Beach. We were able to get out onto the beach before members of the public where stopped. Six of these whales, weighing a total of about 165 tonnes, were buried in the dunes behind Parara beach and the locals decided to dedicate a memorial to them. These six boulders are arranged in a pattern similar to the configuration in which they died on the beach. Each boulder has plaque with a dedication to one of the whales. If you want to visit the memorial it’s at the end of Parara Road about 5 km south of Ardrossan. Here’s one of the plaques. Each whale was given its own name by the children of Ardrossan.
There is lots of wildlife to photogragh, this juvenile sand goanna was near the Rogues Pt boat ramp in December 2019. The next picture wasn’t actually taken at Rogues Pt but gives a better view of a young Sand Goanna we saw at Pengelly Scrub a week earlier. There are always chances to see shorebirds, a Crested Tern, a Sanderling, and a Rainbow Bee-eaters in the sand dunes behind the shack we stayed in. We really enjoyed watching a pair of Rainbow Bee-eaters flying in and out of their nest hole.
There is always something different to see at Rogues Pt. This water bomber was practicing collecting a load of water and then dumping it in the water in front of the shack one day while we sat watching on the verandah.
So, if you are looking for a quiet getaway there are holiday houses to hire at Rouges Point. Happy photographing!
Camera Clips 