In order to make some decisions
about work for next year, we decided we had to get moving and get to
Melbourne. We left Adelaide early and
headed south towards Victor Harbour. We
passed some stunning scenery and more gorgeous vineyards before arriving at the
Granite Island Causeway. There is a
horse drawn tramway that runs along the jetty and has done so for many
years. We walked the jetty to see the
gorgeous Clydesdale horse and then wandered alongside it on what was left of
the return trip… it was great but I hope the people aboard were in no
hurry. We didn’t stay to see any more of
Victor Harbour but instead kept on the move.
We ventured back to the north to make our way around Lake Alexandrina, a
timely exercise due to its size. We
stopped in at Goolwa for a very quick squiz and pick up some information about
the fastest way around but there was no shortcut – low and behold though Sami
was stung by a bee underneath one of her toes (yes she was wearing shoes). There was a scream and quite a bit of pain
but we hushed her and rushed her - back into the car and off we went. We headed north all the way to Strathalbyn
before veering east and across the top of the lake. We finally reached Wellington where we still
had to cross the Murray River, and fortunately we didn’t have to swim. There is a free ferry here to assist with the
crossing! After crossing the river, we
turned onto the Princes Highway and followed it, on and on and on. We passed through Meningie, Coorong, Kingston
SE (passing by the “big lobster”), drove through the Noolook Forest Reserve,
onto Millicent and finally reached Mount Gambier. If we had more time we would have liked to
have spent at least a few days here but that wasn’t the case. We did, however, do a bit of a drive through
the town to a lookout of the “Blue Lake”.
This lake actually occupies one of the craters of the extinct volcano from
which this town was named – and it is an extremely intense deep turquoise blue! We didn’t hang around long as the girls were
excited about crossing another border so Josh drove a bit further for the
afternoon, into Victoria and onto Portland.
It was late when we arrived and therefore figured it was far too late to
check into a caravan park, but Josh in his wisdom found us a gorgeous place to
stop for the night. It looked like it
was a factory parking area (thankfully made discreet by some bushes along the
road) and we had a lovely view over Portland Bay and out to the ocean!
For two reasons, we were up
really early this morning: 1) we wanted to make it to Melbourne today and 2) we
were illegally parked – so we were on the road before 7am. As it was so early we decided to head a bit
further south (past hundreds of sheep) to the Cape Nelson Lighthouse to start
the morning off. The kids weren’t keen
to get out of the car for a look but we forced them anyway. The lighthouse was pretty but there was nothing
happening in the water below, no sightings of anything big. It did look like it was going to be a
fantastic day though as there wasn’t a wave in sight! Passing back through Portland, we were
surprised to see how much logging goes on in this area… there were thousands of
trees knocked down and ready for transport from the loading area. We continued on our drive east bound for
Melbourne and called into Port Fairy.
This is as far west along the Great Ocean Road that we had previously
been to so we stopped to see if anything had changed. It all looked just as it did about 5 years
ago when we were here. The little jetty
still the same and so was the local park.
The kids didn’t remember it but we gave them a bit of time out to have a
play and jog their memories. Back in the
car we drove through Warrnambool and onto the Bay of Islands. It was still as pretty as always and the
weather too was just as cold as last time, however, it was nowhere near as
windy. We didn’t do all the stops like
last time but we did still manage to call into London Bridge, Loch Ard Gorge,
Thunder Cave and onto the Twelve Apostles.
By now, the sun had actually come out and brightened our day so Josh
took off for a minute to arrange a nice surprise for us all, a helicopter over
the Apostles, a stunning view with a different perspective than our previous visit. Back on the ground we walked down the paths
to once again view them from the land – there were so many people, mostly Asian
tourists and everyone was trying to get the best vantage point for a good
photo…. it was havoc so we didn’t hang around too long – not that we had time
to spare anyway. We headed off and drove
to Lorne, where we stopped for a half hour break for something to eat and then
went the rest of the way to Melbourne – and after two full days of driving we
finally pulled into Sunshine, it is actually the name of the town, not the
weather that we were about to receive.
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