South Australia: Mount Gambier to Adelaide

Latest leg of trip:
So as talked about in the last post, we stayed at Mount Schank and when we awoke in the morning we realised it was a volcano, so we went for a bit of a walk to the top and around the rim of the crater....

In this photo you can see the walking track through to the bottom of the crater:

Then we headed into Mount Gambier which is also a volcanic region and we went to the Sunken Cave which was just an awesome sight!!

For Uncle Clem.....

Then we went for a drive and saw the Blue Lake which the town gets its water supply from....

This is what Moutn Schank looks like from afar....

We stopped at Penola which is where we last updated the blog. Then we drove on to Coonawarra for wine tastings!!

The Space Pig at a winery..

Then we drove on to the Bool Lagoon Rest Stop which was pretty basic but hey - free is always good!!! We splashed out and bought a bottle of Rose which we enjoyed with our dinner of brown rice and veges.

In the morning we drove up to the Fossil Caves just North of Coonawarra but didn't go into any caves as too poor :-( But did see a few Kangas....

.... and some big hairy thing!

We then drove across to Robe on the coast and managed to see some wild Emus on the drive.

Robe was a pretty seaside town and we stopped here for lunch. We also went in search of some CRAYFISH but they were pretty expensive so we refrained from buying any (man it sucks being on a budget!!!) They were $60 per kilo here and we saw a huge 4kg one!

We then drove to Kingston and went for a walk on the pier where we saw a couple of oldies going for a fish...

..and saw the giant Crayfish!

We drove on to Meningie where we decided to stay for the night. We saw a cool old school bus which we loved...

and had dinner as the sun went down over Lake Albert. We were so happy to have some sunshine at last!!!

We decided to hang around for a couple of hours and read in the sunshine and then head to our stopover which was just a dodgy lookout...

We went to bed at about 10pm but were woken a few times by cars heading up to the lookout. At about 1am another car full of w@nkers arrived who thought it would be fun to bang on our van.... Being scared buggers we decided it would be best to find somewhere else to sleep so we drove on 40km towards WELLINGTON (Yay!) where we ended up sleeping by the Marina.

We awoke in the morning very bleary eyed after our awful sleep the night before and headed for the Wellington Ferry which is a free ferry that crosses the Murray River - it takes about 4 - 6 cars at a time...

And in true Wellington spirit we even saw something that resembled a Pukeko!
We then continued on to Victor Harbour which is a lovely touristy seaside town - saw a horse tram.. (actually I felt a bit sorry for the poor horse!)

We also drove to Caper Jervis (where you can get the ferry to Kangaroo Island) but not much to see there. We then headed on to Rapid Bay - our camping spot for the next 2 nights. It was a long weekend for SA so it was pretty full but it was a beautiful spot (hence our reasons to stay around for a couple of nights). Upon arrival we found a game of cricket happening at the local oval... very amateur but they even had a bar happening (alas we couldn't partake - aren't we being good!!!! Especially since they were serving our favourite Coopers Pale!)

But a beautiful outlook - you would've loved it Dad Brown!

There was a HUGE cave at the end of the beach...

And Dave got very resourceful with the Tarp and rope - isn't he clever?! And here he is getting the fishing rods ready to do some salmnon fishing on the beach (thanks for the rods Albert!)

We ran out of pegs, so Dave got creative and used a screwdriver.

Living the dream....

I was very happy with Rapid Bay as I manged to find a replacement left Jandal to match the one I lost at Port Campbell - same size and everything!!

We also saw our first snake of the journey - on the road - but a snake nonetheless!!!

So after 2 nights there we moved on to Adelaide and stayed at West Beach Big 4 Motor Camp. Wow - I cannot describe the pleasure of a hot shower after 5 days without one....

We did lots of washing, had showers and went for a swim on the beach. In the morning we headed to Glenelg to catch the tram into Adelaide. We couldn't resist stopping at the outdoor weights machines (Donno and Lee - you'd be so proud!)

Once in Adelaide - first stop - Adelaide Oval!!!And the Bradman Museun (been here Dad Brown? You'd love it!) where Dave had a go at the old golf ball and stump trick....

Centre of the city...

The Markets in the city were HUGE - biggest covered markets in the Southern Hemisphere apparently. Lots of fresh fruit and vege, cheese and....

MEATS.....

...YUM!!!

Rundle Mall..

The Fringe Festival was on too - so lots of street performers around.

We both really loved Adelaide - definately recommend it to all who haven't been. For NZers its a bit like a big Welly in feel - Glenelg is beautiful too.

West beach at sunset:

So here-in ends our journey for the moment. As I write we are in the Barossa Valley - feeling a little relaxed after squishing in some wine tastings into the later part of the day.

Please feel free to leave comments or questions about our trip - we often wonder if anyone is actually reading the blog (apart from Foo, who we know is - we love you Foo!)

Miss you all and please await our next instalment....

Great Ocean Road

Click to Enlarge:

We headed off from Matt and Kaz’s after a fantastic massage from Kaz (thanks Kaz!).We came to the Great Ocean Road Memorial and stopped to take a pic:

As we left in the evening we decided to just head to Lorne (A) for the night and stay in a motor camp rather than try and find a spot elsewhere. After dinner we went for a lovely stroll along the river - very picturesque. Our first night in the van was surprisingly comfy - go the space pig!

After awaking on Monday we went to check out the waterfalls near Lorne as recommended by Kaz, but alas there was not much water to be seen!We drove along the Great Ocean Road which is pretty damn awesome. We headed to the Otway National Park and went to the Otway Fly Treetop walk.

This is a walk through the rainforest which climbs up to various levels until you get to the very top where there is a tower you can climb to view the canopy - this was absolutely brilliant but Ness didn’t make it up the final tower - too high for Nessie!!
After this we drove to the Aire River East Campground in the National Park. This was our first FREE campground of the trip and in really lovely surroundings. We hope to stay in as many of these free places as we can as they are well worth it if you don’t mind not showering and drop toilets!!! We set up the cooking equipment for the first time and it worked brilliantly to cook our yummy pasta.


We even saw our first Koala of the trip perched up high in a tree right by us.


We went for an evening walk by the river which was lovely.
At 5am we woke up to what we thought was a possum on the roof but realised it was just the tarp getting blown around in the heavy wind. We received the msg from the vic authorities telling us there was a high fire risk due to heavy wind which we thought was pretty impressive and were surprised to hear later how many people thought it was an unnecessary measure which just caused panic - we thought it was a great use of technology!

On awaking the next morning we drove to Maits Rest but found it and all the other Nat Parks in the area were closed due to extreme fires risk (due to high winds) so we were unable to explore any of these or stay in a campground in the area. We did hear that they were expecting 20ft swells around the apostles on Wed and Thurs so did not want to head off too quickly as we thought it would be a great time to see them with the big swell. So we headed to Cape Otway to check out the lighthouse which was pretty cool but also VERY windy!

Funny poster!

We saw another couple of koalas on the way out.

We stopped at the Gibson Steps just before the Apostles which are step steps right down to the beach.

We drove on to find a spot to stop for the night and ended up at Port Campbell Motor Camp. It was pouring down by this stage and we were very grateful to have the van to sleep in rather than some of the flimsy tents we saw! We drove past the Twelve Apostles as it was too wet to get out and thought we would check them out in the morning instead. We were able to use the facilities, check emails etc. After dinner (vege soup - yum!) the rain stopped and we decided to drive back to the Twelve Apostles that night instead of the next morning. This was a great idea as they looked so rugged and beautiful with the swell and sunset.









We also stopped by to check out the Blowhole and Thunder Caves but it was getting pretty dark by then so we couldn’t get very good photos. Then it was home to bed and a good sleep!

We woke up to more rain (what is with the weather!!! Worse than Wellington!) and cooked up some porridge on the camp stove which was pretty awesome especially with banana and Uncle Clems honey!! We continued along the Great Ocean Road and were impressed with the huge 15ft swells. We stopped to check out the “Arch” the “London Bridge”, “The Grotto” and “The Bay of Islands” - all with very impressive sheer cliff faces.

We filled up with Petrol at Warrnambool then stopped for lunch at Port Fairy (very pretty but not so much in the rain and wind!!). We drove on to Portland and had a bit of an explore of the area. We saw “Yellow Rock” and the Cape Nelson lighthouse then drove round to Cape Bridgewater Blowholes and Petrified Forest. The Blowholes were crazy with the swells and we got absolutely soaked walking beside them - just as much fun as any theme show ride!!!!

From here there was a bit of a long boring drive to Port McDonnell across the Victorian / South Australian border (although always fun crossing into a new state!!)

We saw a cool echidna crossing the road who was very lucky not to get squashed!!

We drove to Mount Schank Picnic Area (another free site) and cooked up a feed of mashed potato (Mmm, David loves his mashed taities!), veges and gravy before hitting bed pretty early.

We woke early on Thursday morning and saw that Mount Schank was actually a volcano! So we went for a 45min walk up the mountain and around the rim of the crater. This was such a good find and a great walk!!! (Pics to come!)

We drove into Mount Gambier and went to the info centre we we spoke to the best info guide person so far - very informative of things to do in the area. We went for a drive around Blue Lake which is also a crater lake and had a look at the castle (Centenary Tower) at the highest point (more climbing!). We also checked out the Umpherston Sinkhole which was a real highlight - so beautiful and bizarre at the same time.

As I write we are driving up to Coonawarra - WINE COUNTRY!!! Our budget doesn’t extend to buying fine wine but that doesn’t mean we can’t taste them all!!!

We continuing to have a ball and have fallen into the routine fairly easily. It feels a little unusual to drive without a destination but this is also pretty liberating. Its great to know we can stop in an area for a few days or just drive on through if we’re not keen on it. What’s also been funny is that we keep bumping into the same people who are also travelling round in their vans, at different points, often a few hundred kms away!