Coffin Bay National Park, SA.

Coffin Bay National Park won our heart 3 years ago when we camped there for Elsie's 2nd birthday. It was a given that we return - look how big our Big 5 year old is now!

We started off with a few big days to get to Coffin Bay. The kids were getting a little bit sick of the car but they are little troopers and kept colouring princess pages until the car stopped.

Last time we visited the national park we drove into the 4WD campsite and were rewarded with the pretty white beaches, but we also got bogged in the sand so this time around we opted for the Yangie Campground which is all a sealed road and has nice big campsites but no white beaches at our doorstep.

Instead of sand, there is a bay with a very unique ecosystem of marine and wildlife. As soon as we arrived Saul and the kids found some little crabs on the edge of the water. This was super exciting for everyone.

The other exciting thing at the Yangie camp is the resident kangaroos who are very curious and cheeky - the kids learnt very quickly not to leave their breakfast on the table. We had a few particular kangaroos who would visit us each day. There was even a mum and her Joey.

We drove out to the tip of the national park this time around, which is something we didn't do last time, so we were very excited to do this. It was amazing to drive along the seven mile beach and the huge sand-dunes. Out of whole track, the beach ended up being the easy part - the rest was hours of rock tracks and sandy tracks that took a lot of concentration for Saul to drive. Bridie somehow managed a nap.

We saw so many Emus - who are now Kylie's favourite animal. You can not watch them run without laughing. Their little bum wobble is hilarious.

We also saw a dead whale carcass on the beach - to start with we thought it was a piece of a shipwreck, but then Saul got out to have a look and then the smell hit him. There was no doubt it was a dead whale.

So after driving to the tip of the Park, finding some cool shells and building some sandcastles, we decided to stop at the sand-dunes and it was a highlight of our week. Saul and I both doubted any of our abilities to climb the dunes, they were that big, but the kids had no doubt and we lost count of how many times they climbed up and down. 

The fishing was also pretty good at the beach. Zara and Elsie did very well bringing in the fish all by themselves. They caught some King George Whiting, a salmon, a trevally and a puffer fish. And this provided us dinner for 2 nights. 

On our last day, we were lucky enough to catch up with a good friend we met at Port Augusta. Shaleeni now lives in Port Lincoln which is only 30mins from Coffin Bay, and it has been 9 years since we saw each other. Bella came to visit us as well and is doing so well as a 14 year old greyhound.