The Jetty Project

A beautiful spring day for what I'm pretty sure is the last jetty outside the West Coast that I need to visit. It looks to be well renovated and in excellent condition. It's actually more recent than many in the area, built in the early 20th Century to ship gypsum mined at Inneston Lake - hence the cutting to winch down ore trucks. It stopped work in 1972. When we visited there were a couple of people just setting up for fishing who seemed to have it to themselves.

A smallish jetty (less than half the original length) that gives the impression of being well used. We visited late on a Saturday and several fishermen were leaving, only one remaining. But the weather shelters and general wear suggest it is popular. It was still a fine, sunny day but extremely windy, which might be why the water looked so turbid.

 According to my jetty list, there are two structures in Port Vincent. The first is the wharf. This was, obviously,  originally a large commercial wharf. Which is not a jetty, but it's on the list so here it is. It was reduced in size, concreted and turned into a fishing structure some time ago. It stopped being used for grain in 1970 when the silo opened at Port Giles. Then the small town jetty. The big jetty was built in 1877 (the same year as Port Victoria) but removed in 1918 when the wharf was being used. This smaller jettyy has since been modified to lower the end and turn it into a swimming platform.

 Our final jetty on the west side of the Yorke Peninsula. A nice quiet jetty - unfortunately a bit close to the sheltered boat ramp, but they have used that to create a sheltered swimming spot.

 Just a bit further south on Yorke Peninsula, Port Rickaby is a pretty quiet fishing village on a very long beach. There's just a caravan park and a handful of houses. So the hetty was quiet too.

 A slightly unusual shape, Y-shaped with two entrances. I'm not sure why but presumably to do with loading and unloading goods. The far, western, end has a southern branch to provide shelter from the south-westerly winds. Like a lot of the jetties in the region it dates to the late 19th C. It was a lovely day but pretty quiet, with only a few fishermen.

Port Broughton lies on the east side of a J-shaped bay. It is largely silted and there is only a narrow channel from the jetty out into the top of Spencer Gulf. The jetty itself is T-shaped and stretches most of the way across the bay. Several crab boats tie up to the jetty, with a handful of yachts moored out in the channel.

Only just south of the Moonta Bay jetty and well with in sight of it, it is a pleasant and well-used straight jetty.

A long, L-shaped jetty. With a swimming pool enclosure half-way out. It needs to be long because the water is so shallow, it gets deeper at the pool. There are plenty of fishermen and the wood is heavily stained by squid ink.

The first jetty from a weekend staying at North Beach in Wallaroo. There are a number of cafes and parking right at the start of the jetty. The grain belt stretches out from the silos and joins the jetty a hundred metres or so out. Like most of the jetties in the area, it seems heavily used by fisherman. Unfortunately, there were gates preventing access just beyond the northern side arm. The signs suggested that there was still access when they weren't loading but this didn't seem to be the case.

29th July 2018 The largest jetty in Ardrossan is owned by BHP and not publicly accessible. We took a photo for completeness. Then we went on to the town jetty, at the bottom of the ramp. The only people were a father and son.

29th July 2018 Pine Point barely qualifies as a jetty - it looks more like a small landing or a carpark. But it is on the list of public jetties we are using, so we stopped. We could easily have driven onto it, but stopped and ran through the rain to take our photos before running back to the car.

29th July 2018 The Port Julia jetty is quite pleasant, as it is only a picturesque bay. There is a large shelter at the base of the jetty, but the cold and rain did diminish our enjoyment and so we didn't stay long.

29th July 2018 There is a small jetty only a couple of hundred metres south of the main jetty. You might miss it if you weren't looking for it.

29th July 2018 The Sunday was a blustery day, raining intermittently. The main jetty in Edithburgh is wide, with several shelters from the weather - we did not take advantage of them although it started to rain as we walked. The water was particularly clear, like air.