30th January 2014-from Mt Gambier SA to Koroit VIC

30th January 2014

The final night at Mount Gambier was a quiet one for me at home with little Sammy, and Les had a roaring time at the speedway with his Albany mates.

THE SUNSET AT MT GAMBIER SHOWGROUNDS....see what I meant about having plenty of room here!!!

The next day we headed off on the short 175km  drive to Koroit Victoria. It is a little Irish town only 20km from Warrnambool, this location is important as tonight is the beginning of the 3 night Warrnambool Sprint Car Classic which we are attending. Though I should clarify that I am only going to the first and third night (I need to pace myself) but Les is going to all three nights!!! Les has pre-purchased the tickets online as this is such a huge event it would be difficult to get good seats from the gate, in fact we will be arriving early each night just to get a car park even remotely close to the entry, there is plenty of parking...it's just that the later you arrive the further you have to walk......and it can be much much further!!

US AT NIGHT ONE OF THE ANNUAL WARRNAMBOOL CLASSIC 2014-YAY !!! 

 

This is the Australia Day long weekend and there was a lot going on in Koroit every day. The caravan park is a gorgeous little one, it is right next to the botanic gardens and only a short walk to the main street. On Saturday there was a truck show next to us at the showgrounds, Les went there for a look while I walked into town for a mooch around the shops (I feel that I had the better time as I came home with a cool leather bracelet!!!) then Les headed off to night 2 of the speedway. On Sunday there were more events on around the area including live boxing and a Corvette Show. We then headed off together for the final night of speedway, it was a great night with a full crowd of 10,000 people. There was plenty of Mexican waves and quite a few beach balls being bounced around as well.

The speedway was a well organised event and we made a fast getaway every night but it still made for a lot of late nights after sitting in the sun for hours, hence we had a very late sleep in on Monday :) A lot of other people in the caravan park were also attending the event so we were all on the same sleep schedules.

Tuesday dawned very hot so we headed down to Port Fairy (only 20km away) for a swim as they have some amazing beaches. It was in excess of 40 degrees and most of that heat seemed to be coming from the northerly wind-it was like being in an oven. We had a great time, mixing some swims with reading the newspaper in the shade......what a hard life!!!!

The next day, our last day in Koroit, it had cooled down so we took off for some sightseeing. Koroit is on top of Tower Hill, though that hill is actually an extinct volcano. This whole area (including the Mt Gambier SA area) is full of old volcano's. This volcano has filled with water and combined with the ocean in the background it is a wonderful view.

TOWER HILL-THE EXTINCT VOLCANO THAT KOROIT IS BUILT ON 

KOROIT IRISH HOTEL

 

Koroit is a little town of less than 1500 people and being so close to Warrnambool (a large shopping area) and some fantastic beaches it is a great place to visit. It has that lovely small town feel and we made friends with visitors and locals. If we come back for the Warrnambool Classic again we will no doubt be staying here again.

23rd January 2014-Exploring Mt Gambier

23rd January 2014

The day certainly dawned bright and clear. After a lazy start to the day (the first sleep in for a few days.....this holiday lark is pretty tiring!) we back-tracked towards Port MacDonnell in search of Mt Schank, a volcano that we saw direction signs for yesterday (but at the time we were too tired to investigate any further) Indeed it is a volcano and whilst the professionals are not confident enough to say it is extinct, the centuries of trees and foliage make it look fairly harmless. With the memory of the Mt Lofty trek still fresh in our minds, and a lack of sensible footware we declined to climb the very very steep walk to the rim and instead made do with the view from the carpark. We read about the history of the area and were able to look over into a secondary volcanic shaft right next to the main one.

THE SECONDARY VOLCANO NEXT TO MT SCHANK

 

As can happen in life this trip led to another......we had passed a sign that pointed to 'Little Blue Lake" and simply had to investigate further after visiting the actual blue lake yesterday. Heading off down a side road we soon came across the less famous blue lake.....at least it may have been a good mini replica if it had actually been blue!!!!! Admittedly the water looked very inviting.......except it was GREEN!!! I feel the locals are drawing a very long bow in trying to link this to the actual blue lake which as we saw yesterday is very very blue.....

LITTLE BLUE LOOKS SUSPICOUSLY GREEN!?

 

In little blue you are allowed to swim, unlike the actual famous blue lake which you cannot swim in as it is the towns water supply so fair enough really!

Then we headed off, back to a park that is next to the real Blue Lake to have a better look at some exercise equipment we had glimpsed yesterday.

LES INVESTIGATING THE EXERCISE EQUIPMENT (THE BIG SMILE ON HIS FACE MAKES ME THINK IT WAS NO HARDSHIP TO HAVE A PLAY)

 

There is a good assortment of equipment here and most of it uses the persons body weight to provide the counter balance to make it strenuous (see how Les has lifted off the ground!)....very cleverly done. I should admit here that I had heaps more fun playing on this equipment than Les did........you can be as silly as you want when no-one knows who you are (one of the many benefits of travelling) he he he.

We will be leaving Mt Gambier tomorrow and heading into Victoria in search of Sungold Stadium where there is some very exciting sprintcar action happening for 3 nights in a row. In fact Les is at the Mt Gambier Speedway right now catching some of the action, and catching up with friends from Albany who are also attending. Little Sam and I are having a girls night in :) life is great!

22nd January 2014 - Mount Gambier

22nd January 2014

We have left Mt Barker SA behind us and arrived at Mount Gambier SA. Mt Barker is a lovely town and I have certainly met many people and made some very good friends (Hi Loucia !!) We had the dubious honour of being there whilst SA had their hottest and longest heatwave ever..... yes EVER!!!! 5 days of over 40 degrees didn't make for much fun and in the end most people were just staying home in the cool. Les and I did break that schedule up with visits to the pool and eating lots of icypoles !!! Good fun!!

Thankfully the heat eased off at just the right time for us to pack up the annex, wash the van and car and head south to Mt Gambier!!! We arrived here yesterday and headed straight for the showgrounds because here you can camp on the showgrounds and access power and water! The charge is less than at a conventional caravan park but more importantly....there is masses of space for everyone to spread out giving a luxurious sense of privacy and peace. It is also situated right next to the trotting track and as this weekend has a big event scheduled we are able to see lots of horses being put through their training.

Today started off a little gloomy but we had already decided to travel the 28kms to the coast and investigate Port Macdonnell. We drove around the rocky coast and learnt about the lighthouse which no longer stands, the huge amount of shipwrecks that occurred along there and the incredibly brave people who risked their own lives to save others in very risky situations.

AN EXTREMELY ROUGH COASTLINE FULL OF ROCKS AND REEFS THAT HAVE TAKEN DOWN PLENTY OF SHIPS OVER THE YEARS.

The sun came out and we settled down in the park to eat our (copious) fisherman's baskets and enjoy the view. The town is fairly small and seems to be most famous for the amount of Rock Lobsters it provides. We did see scuba divers and snorkelers swimming around the rocks but assumed that was for Abalone.

Back in Mt Gambier we stopped at the Blue Lake for another look. We were here 3 years ago and at that time walked around the rim of the lake. It is an extinct volcano that has a basin of water in it but no-one knows why it is sooooo blue. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't believe how blue it actually is.........this colour only occurs for about 3 months of the year and again no-one knows why

IT TRULY IS THAT BLUE, AS THOUGH SOMEONE HAS POURED PAINT INTO IT!!

By this time we were all tired (and still rolling around from our extensive lunch!) so headed back to the van for a well deserved rest.

SAM HAVING A WELL EARNED SLEEP AFTER A HUGE DAY AT THE BEACH

We have plans for more site seeing tomorrow and there is a speedway event on tomorrow evening at the local track. The weather should be perfect for both!

11th January 2014 - Schutzenfest !

11th January 2014

Yes the Schutzenfest is happening right now in Adelaide!!! This is the BIGGEST festival in the southern hemisphere and the opportunity for a good time for everyone!!

Les and I grabbed a bus and headed into Adelaide with the plan to get to the festival at around the 12 noon opening time. At one of the early bus pickups a gent boarded the bus wearing his Lederhosen, this is when I strongly suspected we wouldn't get lost so long as we followed him! He was very friendly and helpful and indeed we followed him right to the festival (his info on the tram schedule saved us some walking which, on a 33 degree day, we were very grateful for!)

The festival celebrates and showcases everything German, so keeping with that theme.... for lunch I had a German Hotdog, and my afternoon snack was a Pretzel. There were numerous tents selling Apple Cider and Ale which also seemed popular.

 THE ADELAIDE HILLS APPLE CIDER-VERY NICE!

This festival originally started as a shooting festival but got side tracked along the way to include everything German. But they still have the shooting gallery for anyone to have a try (at a price of $4 to $6 depending on what package you choose) I chose the $6 package which got me 10 shots at 10 little teeny tiny targets which were pegged up a very long way away!

SHOOTING, STEP 1 - LEARN HOW TO USE THE RIFLE

SHOOTING, STEP 2 - TRY TO USE THE RIFLE

(SEE HOW FAR AWAY THE TEENY TINY TARGETS ARE !!!)

Now I'm not going to pretend that I did very well with the shooting because I only managed to hit 4 of the 10 targets but seriously...the targets are about 1 inch big so I'm not too upset with the result......and it's really hard to hold a rifle steady when it weighs about 4kg-not kidding!!!! And the biggest tip of the day  is to go to the rifle shooting BEFORE you hit the Cider tent.......I don't think the cider helped at all!!!!

SOME OF THE DANCING ON DISPLAY

I had a GREAT time and am very glad we went. I discovered that I like fresh pretzels......and that I'm not much good at shooting those tiny targets.

Earlier this week we also went back to Mt Lofty and we took a picnic lunch to a rest spot/lookout. It was quite satisfying to sit back and watch all of the walkers heading off on the 8km trek with optimism and bounce in their step.......just like we did last week. And many of them returning looking defeated and/or exhausted.......just like we did last week :(

We also couldn't resist going to Haandorf for a walk around and a nice afternoon tea. Les has a love of Bee Sting cake and as it is a German creation it isn't hard to find in Haandorf. It is obviously tourist season (those relaxed creatures who take up all of the sidewalk at a leisurely pace) as Haandorf was full to busting with people!!!

Week 4 in Mt Barker SA was a great one......stay tuned for week 5!!!!

5th January-Mount Lofty and beyond!

It's the 5th of January and a New Year has arrived! We stepped out of our comfort zone and attended the BBQ that was organised by the Mount Barker Caravan Park management. Les has already made friends with a couple of other happy campers and we met even more. The food was great, particularly the awesome strawberries....possibly the best strawberries I have ever had!!!!! The day was an absolute hottie and the overnight minimum was 24 degrees-yuk.

We bit the bullet and went to Mount Lofty on a 24 degree day thinking this would be a good temp for a walk. The mountain has spectacular views over Adelaide and many walk tracks. The track I wanted to trek was called the waterfall path because it has 3 waterfalls on it.  (We took the arrow pointing left marked 4km-thats 4km down and 4km back up) We walk a lot and had our good walking shoes on so thought this would be a nice bit of exercise, perhaps stretching our abilities a little but nothing too hard....ha ha ha

 At the top we happily headed off down the path to the biggest waterfall which was, of course, at the very bottom. These signposts are all along the path to guide your way, they weren't as comforting as you might think because the emergency numbers on them just acted like a big warning telling me that they don't expect everyone will make it back!!

THE MARKER PEG AT THE TOP OF THE WALK.....NOTE THAT IT HAS AN EMERGENCY NUMBER 19 ON IT-SO THE EMERGENCY CREW KNOW WHERE TO PICK UP YOUR DEAD/DYING BODY.

THE TRACK AT OUR LUNCH STOP

The track above was one of the flattest parts, even though I knew that the facts were that this was a 4km track with a 710mtr drop, the reality was far steeper than we imagined and most of the track was very steep, so steep that it took us the same amount of time to walk back up as it did down.

A SECTION OF TRACK WITH A FERN WALL UP ONE SIDE, THE OTHER SIDE WAS A STEEP DROP

 

The further down we walked the moister it got. The first waterfall we came to (waterfall 3) was dry, but we had already learnt that from other walkers we had spoken to.

WATERFALL 2

 

We kept on trekking (a lot of it was straight down) and eventually came across Waterfall 2 which was set back into a cove and looking gorgeous. The signpost said we were only 600mtrs from Waterfall 1.

 

WATERFALL 1

 







Waterfall 1 was a nice one, I am sure had we come in winter it would have had a much bigger flow but I wasn't complaining. If you look closely you can see people at the top (left side) of the waterfall......this is the path we had just come down. It was here that Les realised there was in fact a carpark here and we could have just driven....he wasn't happy to learn this.

 

Note that in these photos we are still smiling...this is because we had only come down and still had the upward climb to come. There are 3 reasons why there are no photos of us trekking back up:

1  I looked like I was dying

2  I didn't have the energy to get the camera out of my backpack

3 I had to reserve all of my dwindling stamina to try to get back to the top 

 

I will admit that it was a hard slog getting back to the top though the fit looking people who were also struggling to get back up did help me feel less pathetic. It took 4 hours in total and I am soooo glad we did it!

 

Comment of the day came from Les when we were driving home and saw an ambulance "They must be going to Mt Lofty" he said.

 

The next day we were catching the bus into Adelaide !!!! I woke up a little sore but a hot shower and the walk to the bus stop loosened me up! The 1 hour ride was great as it went through tiny towns we had not seen before and we were soon in the city, by which time I had seized up and was barely able to get off the bus :(

 

The boxing day sales were still on and it was pretty busy, we methodically walked both sides of the Rundle Mall, stopping for food and coffee as required.

THIS HOUSE AND ITS DECORATIONS ARE ENTIRELY MADE FROM BISCUITS AND LOLLIES/CHOCOLATES

Found this house, really wanted to nick some of the choccies but realised that hundreds of kids would have been touching them, though I notice some of the chocolate path and gold Ferrere Roche tree were missing.

 

It has been a big week and I am still pretty thrilled that I made the Mt Lofty/Waterfall walk, even the locals are impressed!! We might go back again but this time to have a relaxed lunch in the cafe and feel smug with ourselves that we completed the 8km walk.