Limestone Coast, SA. Great Ocean Road, Vic.

The last blog finished at Strathalbyn, so the journey now takes us along the south coast of Australia and into Melbourne, where this blog series will end.

Posted April 8th 2024

Robe. We pressed on to Robe, knowing we were passing the Coorong, made famous by the  movie Storm Boy. It was a hot day again, all around us was crackly dry, no clouds, dark blue sky. The Coorong needs to be appreciated by camping in the National Park on the edge of the lakes, but we felt more inclined to go to Robe to avoid the mozzies and sandflies this time, and stay close to the coast where it is cooler.

Robe was bustling, being a holiday long weekend probably contributed to that. We had a lovely campsite in the shade beside the ski lake. We decided to have an ocean swim, found Long Beach where you can drive your car on the sand, and OMG…I have never seen so many cars and people lined up on the beach along the shore. The water was cold so most people were just sunning or drinking or playing cricket. Big family groups hunkered under gazebos or awnings attached to their cars. Quite impressive how a seaside can draw so many people! I had a swim and so did Nick….but he wore his wetsuit! 

Cycling around the Robe foreshore and up to the Obelisk was a good way to see the sights. Given the notoriety of this coast for shipwrecks, the Obelisk, built in 1855, was strategically placed to store rockets which were fired to distressed ships, with a line attached, to facilitate some pretty risky rescue operations. The Obelisk is now teetering at the edge of the weathered limestone cliff. Another key historical event at Robe was the arrival of 16,262 Chinese people, who then walked to the Goldfields in Victoria, thus avoiding the landing tax imposed on foreign nationals in Victoria. 

I’d like to visit Robe at a quieter time, if that ever happens. It does look like a bolt hole used by Adelaidians who’ve built beach houses amongst the tea tree and over the sand dunes.

Mt Gambier.

After Robe we travelled to Beachport for morning tea. It was a nice town, again with history obvious in the old stone houses and the timber jetty. After being adequately charged up on coffee and cake, we continued towards Mt Gambier. Our booking for the night was at “Pine Country” caravan park. Why “Pine Country” I thought. It soon became blatantly obvious…there are squillions of acres of pine plantations lining both sides of the highway, with a small National Park tucked in between the pine trees. There were self seeded pine trees growing in the National Park, some had been lopped, but it would seem to be a losing battle to get them all, from what I saw. Jumping ahead a little, we came across an enormous timber mill north of Mt Gambier, with pallets stacked with plastic wrapped timber ready for a Bunnings store near you. The scale was mind boggling.

When we’d setup our van in Mt Gambier, we were exhausted. It was 40C and there was no-where for us to get relief, like a swimming pool. We chose to have dinner in the air-con at a pub. In the dusk we went to the Umpherston Sinkhole. In the late 1800’s it was turned into a botanical garden for promenading. There was a lake at one time but that’s dry now. It’s amazing sometimes to see what the British aristocrats thought was a good idea for a hole in the ground! The garden was suffering from the dryness, the planting was a bit ordinary.

The weather changed, it was back to respectable, bearable. So we chose to drive 50 kms north to Penola in Coonawarra country for a day trip. Penola is yet another quaint historic town, well preserved with signs telling us about its heritage. This was the town Saint Mary MacKillop lived in.  In the 1860’s she created her school for under privileged children. There’s an historic precinct we could walk about, where her school house still exists. The church had a foyer dedicated to her sainthood. We chose to miss her extensive informative history centre in favour of the wineries.

So many wineries to choose from! We just followed our noses and ended up at Wynns, a very old, established and impressive cellar door display and tasting room. Vines outside were 150 years old. For lunch we went to Patrick’s of Coonawarra, where you can get 2 glasses of wine and a tasting platter so big we couldn’t finish it, for under $50. It was delicious. 

The blue lake was another must see place according to our brochures. It’s just one of four craters and two lakes, caves and sinkholes forming the remarkable topography of the city and close surrounds of Mt Gambier. 

It was time to move on, to leave the Limestone Coast of SA and arrive at the Shipwreck Coast of Victoria.

Portland.

The drive to Portland via Nelson was again wall-to-wall pine plantations and not much else. 

Portland has a family connection for me. My great grand-father was the postmaster in Portland from 1920 to 1924. The Post Office is a charming 2 storey solid building, converted now into a fine dining restaurant and private living quarters upstairs. I had already done some research about great grandpa many years ago, so my visit to History House didn’t turn up any new information.

Nick had sussed out the Portland Powerhouse Motor and Car Museum, so I joined him looking at yet more old motors and stuff. Here’s his take on this small museum:

Portland just happened to have a motor museum which was unexpected. While I went to the museum and Jen went to History House. As I entered the place I saw an old boy sitting behind the counter who didn’t seem to be alive but who did stir after I spoke to him. I said I would like to see the museum and he said “Concession or adult”? “Concession” I said. “Four dollars then” said he. I said “Can I use the card”? “No it don’t work”.  “Ok I will come back later then”. He mumbled something back and I went to find Jen and some cash. She had finished doing her stuff so we went back to the museum together. Exactly the same thing happened, same questions, obviously short term memory loss, I thought that I might have to check his pulse at one stage. 

The museum was good with lots of old service station illuminated signs, tool boards, tractors etc. The oldest there was a 1914 Swift Cycle Car that is obviously an ancient relative of our Swift pop up van. 

Jen: I think I’ve done enough car museums to last me forever. So when I heard there was the annual dahlia display at the Botanic Gardens, I knew it was a must see – fresh air, colourful, alive, all the things a museum is not. 

We watched fishermen on the wharf, ships in dock loading wood chips (pine of course), and found a great seafood outlet. We climbed the war memorial tower for a long view across the town. On our way to Cape Bridgewater and Cape Nelson lighthouse we did a couple of coastal walks. One had a landscape of what was called a Petrified Forest. They are hollow tubes of limestone eroded by millions of years of rainfall, the sand gathers in the pan forming cement which creates hard trunk shaped pipes. Maybe the Pinnacles in WA formed this way?

There are three large wind farms around Portland, we happened upon a maintenance man hanging from the end of one of the propellors. Not my idea of fun.

Portland has the only mainland based Gannet colony in Australia, where up to 7000 breeding pairs sit on this tiny piece of coast until the babies fledge. We saw just a few who still remained at the end of their season. A wire fence kept us quite a distance from the birds, for good reason.

Warrnambool.

Port Fairy is a quaint fishing village on the coast that we stopped at on the way to Warrnambool. It was Saturday morning as we passed through, the town was very busy, the market was on. We saw a lady buying three lobsters at $90 per kg, from the fisherman. One day I’d like to go to the Folk Festival, but judging by the people and shops we saw, it will be a very expensive event.

We carried on to Warrnambool and found our booked van site was right beside a large family group of Chinese people, we suspect this might have been their first camping experience. We tolerated their loud voices, loud children and wandering through our campsite for most of the day, but by 10.00pm when they sat in a circle of maybe 15 adults chatting noisily, we had to read them the riot act…well in fact we calmly told them time for bed. They never made another sound and quietly did as we asked. I can’t imagine some other campers we’ve met on this journey being so obliging. 

The bike paths along the foreshore were a good place to begin exploring Warrnambool. Lots of people, dogs, kids on scooters to swerve around! A bit nerve wracking for me, who still feels a little vulnerable after my fall weeks ago.

We drove out to Tower Hill Nature Reserve and did a 2km wander looking for wildlife. We came across two Americans who were so thrilled to see a pair of galahs high in a tree, they couldn’t stop talking about the “gaaalaaaahs”. It made me realise how blasé we are about our beautiful birds, especially galahs which we often see in large screeching flocks. They wanted to see a koala, and bingo, there was one in the fork of a tree, snoozing of course. We got back to the carpark and found there were 3 koalas in different trees there, all being adored by International visitors.

Flagstaff Hill is an extensive museum and reconstructed village from the pioneering days. Inside the museum, there was a lot of information about Loch Ard Gorge and the shipwreck where just 2 people survived. What we didn’t know was that there was a statue of a peacock, about 2 metres tall, made by Minton Majolica in 1875, which was on that shipwreck, obviously well packaged for the journey. It was destined for the International Exposition in Melbourne in 1880. It was salvaged off the beach, but the story of it’s being handed from person to person over many years, being put up for auction, and sitting in an antiques shop, before being purchased by Flagstaff Hill in 1975, is fascinating and can be found on the net.

Being suitably impressed by all we saw and did in Warrnambool, we were ready for the Great Ocean Road.

Over 10 years or so in the 1990’s, we worked taking tours in our 1950’s Jaguars along this road. It was lovely to come back again to see how it was coping with hundreds of tourists daily. Pretty well actually. The weather as is typical on this southern coast of Australia, had become chilly and damp.

Marengo (Apollo Bay)

Marengo is a couple of kms from Apollo Bay and our camp was nicely tucked behind a hedge out of the wind. It rained heavily through the night, something we’d barely experienced in 11 months away.

Apollo Bay looks like it will be the next Lorne. Shops are looking trendy, the foreshore is tastefully adorned with sculptures and the once tiny village has now become a town. 

Wye River.

This little village which has just a pub and a general store is also attracting wealthy home-owners, or more accurately, landlords. There are a few hundred houses doted around the very steep hillside, overlooking the pristine surf beach at Wye River. A bushfire destroyed one side of the hills and all the houses there, 7 years ago. Now there are massive new steel-on-steel houses replacing them. They are forbidden to even have redgum sleepers to retain their garden beds.

My childhood was spent at Wye River every school holiday until I was a teenager. My grandparents built one of the first houses in Wye..in 1934..it still stands behind the pub, but my cousin’s family inherited it. 

The pub in town has had several iterations since the old dark timber version I remember. It did burn down at one time. There used to be a row of massive cypress pines along the roadside. They were cut down and now the tables in the pub are cypress pine beauties from those trees. 

Needless to say, to finish our trip here for me is completing a circle of adventures. Memories of the past are very comforting especially if the present isn’t too changed, as with Wye. 

Next we head into Melbourne for a month of family and friends catching up. I will call this the last post! I have really enjoyed writing this diary for my own record and have loved sharing it with everyone. What I will do with the blogs is unknown at this point.

Nick: I have loved every minute of this trip and even though you only see me writing about cars and fixing the Land Rover, I have been in the background supporting the editor, checking spelling and grammar, doing the dishes etc. I want to thank Jen immensely for putting up with me in close quarters for 12 months, watching me get bored when there is not a job to do on the car, getting in the way in our tiny van, I think that we are still friends! I have read so many books that I vow to not read any books in the near future except for repair manuals. The car has been magnificent even though we did have some issues but let’s not forget it is 26 years old and with the 33,000 kms on the clock this trip, it now has 433,000kms. It will need a rebuild of the suspension when we get back as it has taken a decent hammering on our way around. Many people have asked ‘What is the best thing about the trip? I have to say it has been spending time with Jen and sharing our experiences together.

Jen: After reading what Nick has written, just before I publish this, I’d better respond. I am so grateful that he was such an expert with all aspects of fixing our car, our caravan and any other vehicles within cooee that needed fixing. We would have been carted home on a tow truck very early in the trip if he had not been capable of keeping the car progressing forward. I think back to Cape York Peninsula when the alternator cracked it and we drove for a thousand kms with the solar panels strapped to the roof with leads into the motor. Such an achievement!

I have lovely fond memories of being with our fellow travellers on the road and think of those times as being among the best. Staying with family in WA was also a great way to know a new place and to have heartfelt connections with them.

Surviving in a tiny caravan compared to the big vans we saw has amazed me. I am over walking 100 metres to the toilet at 6.00am, and also showers shared by the masses.

My highlights: very hard to narrow down as there are many. The Pilbara is visually stunning especially Hammersly Gorge. Reaching Cape York tip was a great achievement, and going to Thursday Island was an unexpected treat. The WA coast from Cape Leveque down to Perth is amazing, but Francois Peron NP at Shark Bay was pretty special. I need to return there someday to Ningaloo to swim with whale sharks.

But now I’m ready for home. Nick is desperate for some garage time and I miss my garden and friends. Although the trip has enriched our relationship enormously, we need some space, some time to be creative, and time to pick up the threads of our old life and transform it with our new perspectives.

So cheers, love and blessings 

Jen & Nick & Swifty.