Somewhere in South Australia - Big Holidays

Behind Port Fairy we left the Great Ocean Road on December 10 and drove to Portland, Cape Nelson and Cape Bridgewater.




Beyond a forest close to this beach lies a series of exciting blowholes – rock tunnels that have been etched out of the volcanic rock by the waves. During rough seas, the water squirts high into the air what we tried to capture as good as possible on this picture, but not really successfully, because you can't see how high the water splashes.

Only a few hundred metres walk ahead of the blowholes you find yourself in the middle of a petrified forest. But there's no towering trees to be found here. The terrain is rocky and craggy with short stumps and trunk circles where the trees used to be. Many theories have been put forward to explain this quirk of nature. Accepted as most plausible is the one that says a forest of moonah trees once stood on the site. Shifting sands covered them with a huge dune, suffocating them. Water seeping through the sand eventually formed a thick crust on the trunks. The wood and leaves just rotted away, leaving the "petrified" trunks.Shortly after Cape Bridgewater we crossed the border from Victoria to the state of South Australia. On a sign next to the road in the middle of nowhere we were kindly requested to throw all our fresh food (what we just bought 10 mins. ago) in the provided rubbish chute. Fines apply in case of not obeying... They are crazy, the Australians, afraid of any harmful bacterials introduced in their country! Just crazy! But of course, we didn't throw our food away. We just bought it! Who was supposed to control us there in the middle of nowhere?

Oh, and what you have to know when passing the border (and what we of course didn't take notice of at the beginning): note the time difference of 30 min.!!! No, not 1 hour, exactly 30 mins.! Why not 25mins and 37 seconds??? Again: crazy!

Anyway, not far after the border lies the town of Mount Gambier with the volcano of the same name. Main attraction in this town is the Blue Lake which does credit its name. Without scientists having a clear explanation for it, the lake changes at regular intervals its colour: from November it shines for half a year in deep blue, afterwards the water shimmers in turquoise-grey.

After a short stop at this amazingly blue lake, we continued our trip through the "nothing" of the Coorong National Park, a ca. 150 km long coastal strip where you just keep going straight on without hardly meeting any other cars. It is a known bird sanctuary, characterised by long sand banks, some salt pans and sand dune strips covered with some dry shrubs. In total not too interesting to drive through.

Places like Beachport, Kingston or Meningie consist of a beach full of flies (welcome to South Australia!) or of nothing more than one main street with approximately 15 houses, 1 shop and a few residents... What a lonesome area!

But we also left this part and came back to civilisation. We reached Victor Harbor, the main town on the Fleurieu Peninsula, 83 km south of Adelaide. Where now local business hunt day-trippers like us for their dollars, they once were a centre for sealing and whaling. The little island is the Granit-Island.

Finally arriving in Jervis Bay looking forward to Kangaroo Island, we got really disappointed as $470 for the ferry to cross 13 km forced us to decide not to go anymore to the island, but directly further north towards Adelaide.

We actually didn't spend a lot of time in Adelaide's city itself, only one day:

We spent a lot of time in the beautiful and very green surroundings of South Australia's capital. However, one day heavy rain blocked us for one day on the Brownhill Creek Caravan Park which had in its middle a really huge old tree - the "Monarch of the Glen".

The good thing about it: we taught Marco "Doppelkopf", a very traditional German card game, and had some fun playing a few "Siedler von Catan" ("Settlers of Catan").

Among our stay in the region of Adelaide was also the visit of the Cleland Wildlife Park where we met some of Australia's typical wildlife, which you can see in the pictures of the post "Simply the best!"

Before crossing again the border from South Australia to Victoria, we crossed the Murray River (Australia's biggest river) and passed the little towns of Murray Bridge and Bordertown. Back in the state of Victoria, I spent again (see next post) two days in the Grampians, this time with Marco, my father and Andrea.