We originally booked 27 nights in Port Willunga with the specific intention of getting our COVID-19 vaccinations in nearby Port Noarlunga during our stay. In fact we booked the vaccination appointments first and then booked this stay based on those vaccination dates – which were 3 weeks apart.

We had previously been to Aldinga Beach (an adjacent suburb) on a brief day trip from Goolwa Beach and we remembered the area as being very scenic.

We ended up really liking both the area and also the place where we were staying – which was a spacious granny flat above a garage with an outside balcony overlooking the owner’s yard.

We didn’t have anywhere booked after this stay and we were considering heading to Western Australia – but the COVID-19 border restrictions that they had in place meant that if there was one single case of COVID-19 reported in South Australia, then the WA border would be closed immediately. This normally wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but the WA border was 15 hours of driving away – and the last 8 hours of that was across empty desert… The thought of driving for two whole days and then maybe being blocked at the border and having to turn around put us off going to WA.

South Australia was apparently going to ease its border restrictions and start letting people in without quarantine at the end of December. Therefore we decided to just stay where we were until the end of December and see what happened.

We really liked the place that we were staying in, and so we arranged directly with the owner to stay until just before Christmas. It was however already booked for 12 days over the long October weekend – so we had to ‘go on holiday’ for 12 days and then come back for the rest of the stay. This meant that we ended up staying for 32 days, before we left and came back to the same place 12 days later. We then stayed for another 67 days in Port Willunga.

During this first part of our stay we explored all the neighbouring suburbs and found a brewery (Kickback) within walking distance that we ended up visiting quite a lot. We also took a day trip out to Newland Head Conservation Park and visited Onkaparinga River National Park.