Mount Gambier (6th-8th August)

Mount Gambier. A place we loved so much we actually stayed in the area for 3 whole days! There was a fair bit to do around and about, and really it was the first time we had left the coast for quite a while! We actually stayed in a camp site here as well, a shower being an attractive feature of said campsite. I'll take a moment here to tell you of our camping set up because somehow we hadn't actually thought to bring a tent with us, we did purchase one at a later date. So for our camping set up we had a swag, which is kind of like a sleeping bag, in the fact that it's a bag you sleep in but it's made from a thick waterproof canvas and has absolutely no warmth factor to it. But it does have a mattress. So in addition to the swag we had a sleeping bag and a doona (that's a duvet to you British folks) for warmth, and we had a tarpaulin that we tied from the car to two trees for a shelter/ wind break. It wasn't actually as bad as it sounds, though the tent was a welcome addition when we got it.

Anyway, our first night in Mount Gambier we went, in good Aussie fashion, to the pub where we met a nice bloke called Shannon (had to share that) who gave us a few ideas on places to check out. The first I wandered off to there and then, was a sink hole, which had also appeared in the book. Mount Gambier has really made a feature of it's sink holes. This one was an incredible and incredibly eerie experience. The sink hole had a path leading down it with trees and vines growing all the way up the side, running water falling down one side with ivy-like creepers and, this being in the dark of night, had been back lit, silhouetting all the features with changing colour lights. There was Aboriginal music playing, mist rising from the water at the bottom and too dark to actually see where you were going, overall a somewhat creepy experience, and nowhere near as impressive by day.

Their other sink hole they had turned into a beautiful sunken garden, which to my endless amusement has it's lawns mowed by a population of guinea pigs.

Not only is Mount Gambier the proud owner of a few sink holes but also to a few extinct volcanoes, most of whom the craters are now (or have been in the past) lakes. Some have dried up now. Their most famous is the blue lake, which is a bright blue in the Summer. This however was the middle of winter and it was a dull grey/blue. But we did drive over the rim of an extinct volcano and down into the crater which was definitely quite cool.

We also drove out to Mount Shank, about half an hour out of Mount Gambier










and walked up the extinct volcano and all the way around the rim, and in my case right down into the bottom of the crater! That was 335 steps up the volcano, 190 into the crater and back out, all the way around the top and back down again! Enough exercise for the week. We made a point of counting steps as Shannon had told us he carved the number on the steps... You meet some interesting people.

Mt Shank seemed a good and popular place to stop the night... in the middle of nowhere, and in fact a lot of people seemed to, including the next person we met, a guy writing a book of free things to to and places to stay along the coastal areas of South East Aus. Could have done with that book! Instead it was morning coffee over a crater =)

The Great Ocean Road! (4th-6th August)

So we skipped around Melbourne in a storm. Really the weather was horrendous, stopping only to surprise some relatives of mine, and went on to Torquay, by which time the weather had improved vastly. The drive there had been horrific and not just because of the weather. The weather had been horrible, particularly on the motorway west of Melbourne; about as little visibility through the rain as it's safe to drive in, the rain was so bad. And then, bypassing Melbourne the navman (that's sat nav to you Brits) decided to send us up and down the same bit of motorway about 4 times, through the toll-road each time.

Anyway we made it to Torquay for the night and actually managed to find a caravan stopping area to camp in for the night... and a nice pub/club for a few drinks and a chat with a Kiwi racehorse breeder. Then, in the morning, after a necessary laundry stop, we were on to the Great Ocean Road.

Despite the fact this bit of the drive only took us 2 days, we really were taking it nice and easy. Our first stop was in Anglsea, to let Casey have a bit of fun... playing golf. I have to admit even I found the course incredible, it was covered in kangaroos! 

Even saw a little Joey in it's pouch...

I never really got into golf, as I'm sure you can tell...

Next stop, Aireys Inlet, where thanks once again to the book, we stopped at the lighthouse from Round the Twist, and sea stacks similar to the Twelve Apostles, which will appear later in this post.


And at the end of our first day, a stop in Lorne, where I, in the morning, enjoyed yet another coffee on the beach, from my grumpy mug =)

By day 2 of the Great Ocean Road (which was actually day 7 of the road trip), Casey had really got into the swing of stopping at all the brown signs; touristy stops.

Today it seemed to be waterfalls. First off was Erskine Falls in the Otaway Forest which were really beautiful, probably to do with the deluge of rain in the previous week.

The second falls we decided to go to, we didn't actually make it to. The path to Sheoak Falls was very flooded, though Casey did design an interesting way to cross the flooded path.

So we went to Teddy's Lookout instead. Now plenty of people have beautiful pictures of the Great Ocean Road, but how many people have pictures of rainbows over the Great Ocean Road. The views of the road were amazing.




And later on the Twelve Apostles, beautiful sea stacks.

And London Bridge, which used to have one more arch which collapsed in 1990, leaving two people stranded out on the bridge.

And my favourite, the Bay of Isles, at sunset.

We reached the end of the Great Ocean Road in Warrnambool that night, 2 days later, 252km from Torquay. The most incredible place we found at Warrnambool was Logan Beach.

The seabed drops away straight off the beach creating a deep channel which humpback whales use as a nursery. Despite the closeness to the beach, my camera wasn't quite good enough to take brilliant pictures, but I'm pretty sure these were killer whales.


I'll just continue now as far as Yambuk, a stop we made half an hour after leaving Warrnambool on the 6th.











We stopped for the sole purpose of the 30m slide listed in 'The Book.' and ended up staying most of the afternoon. Casey managed to catch his first tiny fish and I sat on the beach watching the waves roll in straight from the Antarctic, beautiful!