Day 66: Quobba Station

Quobba Station is a family run Sheep Station running stock of around 10,000 Damaras (South African Meat Sheep) on 187,000 acres with an 80 km coastline as  the Western Border and Lake Macleod as the Eastern border. It has a very long history established in 1898, and originally ran merinos for wool production.


A couple of healthy "pet" damaras near the campsite

Many of the old buildings still exist and some have been turned into accommodation.



Old Shearers Quaters


Old Shearing Shed

Within this area, which is now the Homestead camping area, they have added some other rustic structures that fit in well.


The camp kitchen



Main amenities

They also run a second, more basic campsite, 60 km down the rough dirt road, called Red Bluff. We have seen some dedicated fishos endeavour to disintegrate their caravans heading that way.

There is no doubt that Quobba Station is synonymous with shore based game fishing, and they come well equipped with some amazing gear and you have to be fearless to get to the best spots, scaling steep cliffs, and fishing on dodgy rock platforms. The office at the campsite offers loan lifejackets for those fishing the coast. Ballooning is very popular and some big Spanish mackerel and cobia have been at the fish cleaning tables whilst we are here, as have spangled emperor and tuskfish.

We went for a drive this morning to look for some fishing spots that may not require mountain goat skills or super flash equipment. It is blowing around 20 knots and the swell is pretty healthy, but we may have found one spot we can try tomorrow.


The coastline is basically rock cliffs and platforms with very few beaches. Like the beach at our campground, the reef in most cases comes right to the beach.



Carole checking out one popular site



There is plenty of wave action on the outgoing tide






This place may have some potential


We did discover it was a good place to search for sea shells.

This afternoon I thought I would have a look at the area South of our campground beach, maybe there is a good spot there.

It turned out to be one big rock platform that goes as far as the eye can see down the coast.


Looking back at our campground and beach





The low platforms are ideal for low tide fishing, but also for getting swept off the rocks. Getting down to them is another issue. You can see why they use helium balloons to float baits out 100 m of the cliffs at high tide and hope they can land the fish. Long pole gaffs are needed.


Another great sunset tonight


My attempt at getting a photo of the full moon (not what I wascexpecting)

Tomorrow we are driving down to see the blowholes, snorkel in the lagoon down there, know as the aquarium, and hopefully find somewhere to wet a line.









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