Coffin Bay National Park

Yesterday I mentioned the possibility of visiting Coffin Bay National Park. After visiting a local fish factory shop to buy four portions of Gummy Shark (yummy), We headed off towards Coffin bay.

After driving round the little village to let our friends see it, we made our way towards the National Park. The entrance fee to the park for one car is $7 (that’s about £3), but as we soon found out, it was well worth it.

We drove around, sticking mainly to the sealed roads (even though our trusty motor is 4×4) and checked out a few of the beaches, and after visiting two or three we finally decided on a beautiful white sand beach with only another two people on it.

On the way down we didn’t see the big yellow warning sign (see the slideshow) warning us that people have drowned there before. So after a time of sun-bathing, in our ignorance we headed into the sea.

Man was it freezing! The currents of open coast of South Australia comes from Antartica, and I don’t think it gets much of an opportunity to warm up before arriving in sunny Oz! In saying that, on the second attempt we got used to it, and went out into the waves.

Have you ever experienced a rip current? If you haven’t and you encounter a strong one it can be pretty scary. There were numerous occasions yesterday where I could feel the current almost sweeping my off my feet!

As I am writting this post, I am thinking about how this is much like the Christian life. Staying on the beach is similiar to how we ought to remain in the will of God, doing what he wants and obeying His voice. However, when we stray from this into the sea, even just a little bit, there can be a strong pull from the current of the world to take us deeper and deeper. Our aim is to keep our head above water, something that is only guaranteed when we remain on dry land. But how sad it is when a Christian gets caught by a ‘freak’ wave and swept away. Even if/when he does get back to dry land, his testimony is scarred, and people always remember the mistake he made, standing in a risky spot where he should never have been. May that not be the case for us.

After sun-bathing for a while longer, we decided to take another ‘dip’ before we left. There’s a body-board in the house here in Port Lincoln, but I never took it with us. However it would have been great fun yesterday. As the waves came in we were trying to swim with them, but you need a board to do it right.

Just before we left the sea we had the wonderful experience of seeing a sea lion about 3 three metres from where we were standing. You could just see its dark figure moving below the waves which was pretty cool we thought.

Not sure what we’re going to do today. I have to head up to Elliston for the meeting at 5:30pm so we’ll be leaving here at 3pm or so. I’m not sure if our friends will be coming with us or not. I was thinking that we could maybe head up early and have a look around Elliston, but I’m not sure yet.

Along the same lines...

• Coffin Bay
• Late update
• Bondi Beach