Fluro? Flerio? Floorio? Fleureiu!
The first thing we did when we got to Victor Harbor was wander in to the Information Centre to ask them how we pronounce the ‘Fleureiu’ name. They weren’t too much help actually, they were happy with however we wanted to say it! We headed to the Fleurieu Peninsula after our stay in the Murraylands.
Victor Harbor is probably the most well known location on the Fleurieu Peninsula, with Granite Island, the Cockle Train and Oceanic Victor being just a few of the local highlights. Perhaps most iconic is the horse drawn tram over to Granite Island. We had to check that out.
You can walk across to Granite Island across the Causeway, or like we did take the Horse Drawn Tram. What a way to get where you are going! In addition to amazing views, you will also be rewarded with birdlife and sometimes dolphins and whales. We were really lucky and saw an entire pod cutting laps up and down the shoreline.
Seeing dolphins in the wild like that was unbelievable. We’d never seen so many dolphins, just hanging out doing what dolphins do like that. It was a massive pod, and throughout our walk around Granite Island they were just cutting laps up and down the shoreline chasing fish and playing in the surf. We had fun spotting them as we walked around checking out the massive granite boulders, unique to the island.
That was a great experience over at Granite Island. There is a café on site, toilets as well, and plenty of space to just explore and really feel like you are on your own. The causeway is something to see on its own, we came back later that night to try our luck fishing.
When in Victor Harbor we stayed at the Victor Harbor Holiday & Cabin park. It’s tucked away a little bit from the foreshore, but wow did it make up for it with things to do! They have one of the best kids activity programs going around.
It was a fantastic holiday park. Check our website for a full review, but it had everything with regular kids activities, a jumping pillow, big playground a great pool and even a little caravan kitchen for late night snack food.
We headed off for the other side of the peninsula, and we couldn’t believe our luck. We drive down into Rapid Bay, brakes smelling mind you, (wow that was a deep descent with the van on the back!) and as we drive in there right on the water was an open bay!
You don’t book at Rapid Bay, just show up and pay your fees to the local campground staff. It is an amazing location with beautiful waters, a long pier and lot’s to do in and around the local area of the Fleurieu Peninsula. But the boys had been absolutely hanging out to go fishing, so off we went.
We caught squid! Our first catches on our lap of Australia, with cheap $4 lures and hand reels. The boys were so excited.
We did so much fishing off the back of catching 3 squid! Non stop for 3 days basically, unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be. Our plan of attack is to upgrade our hand casting reels to rods and our $4 reels that are falling apart to some better quality ones, and they we can fish out way around the coast. There is so much squid out there. We were literally watching them off of the peer swimming around our lures.
When we pulled in to our campsite we got really lucky and met Baylee and her Mum Amanda who were in the site next door. Baylee ended up being our chief guide for the duration of our stay in Rapid Beach, and after the fishing dried up we were told the next best thing to do is pier jumping!
There are two piers in Rapid Bay, the old mining pier which had fallen into disrepair, and the newer fishing pier. There were stairs and platforms down to the water for the divers who frequent the ruins of the old pier which in addition to squid were teaming with seahorses. We also saw a big eagle ray stingray whilst fishing previously, so this put Alex off a little bit. He was heavily conflicted about wanting to jump or not. We told him he didn’t have too, but he was super keen to do it and ultimately overcame his fears.
The waters were crystal clear, and we had a great time swimming and snorkling the days away. Not only did we swim at Rapid Bay, but we also went around to what I am going to say is our favourite Fleurieu Peninsula Beach, Second Valley.
We saw a heap of fish, no squid though! We headed back to Rapid Bay, with plans to explore a large cave at the edge of the beach.
Rapid Bay had a heap to do. We had plenty of time there, managed to make it through the crazy busy period over the weekend! We finished off with a swim, packed up and headed off to or next destination, the Adelaide Hills.