Rain rain go away

We set up in the drizzle last night at Stony Rise campground, Little Dip Conservation Park, and packed up in the rain this morning, so we're now at the Robe public library trying to work out where we might stay tonight where it's not raining. I don't mind when it rains at night while we're cosy in the tent, but not so keen on the setting up and packing up in it.
Before it started raining though yesterday we had a nice day - quite a bit of driving (mostly on Nick's part) as we left Lower Glenelg NP (still didn't make it until 10am) and firstly headed for the Mt Schank Crater, a dormant volcano - who knows when it might erupt next! It was really cool actually, you can climb right up the side of it and look down into the crater - you can walk down into the crater but we were a bit pushed for time so we just enjoyed the view from the top. Then into Mt Gambier to look at the Blue Lake - it really is a bright blue, they think it changes colour as the surface water temperature warms up and cools down. We also restocked with food, and ate our lunch next to the Umpherston Sinkhole, which I think was the kids' favourite. It it kind of strange, in that you're sitting in a park eating a sandwich, head off to the loos and suddenly walk past a huge great big hole in the ground that you hadn't noticed behind the trees. You can walk down into it and it has gardens, long strands of ivy growing down into it and a fountain at the bottom - there were photos showing how it was previously set up when part of a private property, with quite an ornate garden and a lake (this was before the water table dropped) with a little island at the bottom which the farmer used to row his guests around on. He even planted walnut trees which were apparently quite prolific, as long as they stayed below the frost line. It was really quite deep, and you could clearly see the limestone layer, the lava (basalt) layer and the ash layer at the top. Very cool.
Then it was a visit to the Lady Nelson Discovery Centre (don't waste your money) and off up to where we spent the night near Robe, called Stoney Rise campground. It was a bumpy, sandy ride into the campground (I don't think you're actually supposed to take trailers in there but it was starting to get dark so we just picked it) and we decided not to come back into town again that night on a track like that in the dark, so the fish and chips dinner had to put off 'til lunch today. This morning we rode our bikes down a sandy track to the beach (which, not surprisingly, was pretty stony) which was really nice. Not that the kids needed convincing to go down there, but my ulterior motive to go down was so that all of our feet could have a bit of a wash in the sea - this is our... fifth day showerless so far and our feet (mine in particular if I'm honest) are starting to get a bit pongy. You'd think I'd be worried about the rest of us but as it's not actually hot, we're not sweating much, just the stinky feet stuck in socks and shoes all day - unfortunately the campgrounds are mostly that black sandy dirt so not really conducive to taking shoes off.
Anyway our feet our kind of clean now, although the rest of me isn't great after packing up in the rain. The steaming hot fish and chips went down a treat though, just what we needed on a day like today, and now to decide where to go!

Lower Glenelg NP

We took quite a while to pack up from Hamilton yesterday morning (it seems to be getting longer rather than shorter), partly because Nick was doing some work on the car, and we forgot we needed to fill up the water tank etc etc. We knew we weren’t going far at least, and we arrived at Lower Glenelg National Park in time for a late lunch. It was also the first day we felt like we went a bit ‘off road’ as we had our first creek crossing – you would be proud Vic, we immediately jumped out, found a stick and tested how soft the bottom was even though we could see it most of the way across, then reread the section in your course manual. It was hardly much of a creek crossing in the scheme of things, but good to start with an easy one! It is also the first campground where we’ve had a fire so that also made it feel more authentic. It’s an absolutely beautiful place (Pritchards Campground), right next to the river with lots of birds around and we think we might have heard koalas in the trees last night, although haven’t actually seen any yet (lots of wallabies and possums). There’s also not many people here, what with school starting again in Victoria today, and the weather couldn’t be better. One thing that we really haven’t worked out yet though is boiling water – still getting used to not having the kettle, as it takes FOREVER to boil water either on the stove or the fire. It’s always holding us up, as we need to boil water for tea, water for pasta, water for washing up, water for hot water bottles etc etc. It meant that although we arrived here in plenty of time yesterday, the kids were screaming for dinner by the time it finally arrived at 7pm (boiling water for pasta). We are determined to start the fire earlier tonight to get it to the right temperature earlier! This morning we went for a really nice walk along a trail which is part of the Great Southern Walk and which goes pretty much through the campsite. It meanders alongside the river in some spots or through the bush and was really nice. No mobile coverage unfortunately so I will have to load this up tomorrow when we go through Nelson. Aine you will be pleased to hear that we remembered the What’s the Story Rory cubes this afternoon and Conor is now hooked. It was hard to stop him interrupting other people’s turns because, as he said, ‘I’ve got so many things in my head mum, it’s my imagination’.

Writing journals Lower Glenelg NP

Byaduk Caves and Lava Blisters, Hamilton

With the Blakes at Ballyglunin Park

Roasting chestnuts by the bonfire at Hamilton

koala at Otway National Park

Volcanoes

Today we did a bit of touring of the Hamilton area, which is famous for being a volcanic area. Unfortunately the volcanic discovery centre nearby wasn’t open (being a public holiday), but we still saw some cool stuff. We first went to the Byaduk caves, which formed 32,000 years ago when the Mt Napier volcano last erupted. It was a composite volcano, and apparently it started as lava flowing out the top quite slowly (walking pace) which went on for about a month, and then at the end there was a violent explosion and a huge amount of volcanic rock flew hundreds of metres into the air, which from memory is called Scoria. We saw lots of examples of it lying around on the ground which has a lot of little holes in it (air pockets) and was reddish. It’s also quite light because of the air pockets. There were four caves there, one of which you could climb into. Apparently there are bats in there but we didn’t see any – lots of ferns and moss though. The caves were all formed when Mt Napier erupted and lava flowed through valleys forming lava tubes. The outside of the tubes cooled and hardened while the lava inside kept flowing, and then the roof of some parts caved in, creating the caves. After that we went to see some Tumuli, or lava blisters, nearby, which are these really cool mounds of volcanic rock. There’s between 20 – 30 of them in someone’s private field, and it looks like someone just came along and created these huge piles of rocks, some of them the height of a house. They’re the best ones in Australia apparently, and they were created when pressure from the lava underneath the earth became so great that they caused little eruptions and the rocks burst out (at least, I think I’m remembering it right). I’ll try and download the photo too so that it makes more sense.

After the Tumuli we had a nice sandwich lunch at Mt Eccles near Lake Surprise, but didn’t do the walk in the end, just came home to catch the second half of the Essendon – Collingwood game which is going exactly the way Michael and Kathy would like it to (so far).

The Farm

Later…

We’ve had a very interesting tour around the farm in Michael’s ute – they have 10,000 sheep and 380 cattle here on 1800 hectares and the cows have almost finished calving, while the sheep are right in the middle of lambing. This meant that there were lots of calves around only a few weeks old, and little woolly lambs everywhere (there will be 13,500 sheep once all the lambs have been born) – we even saw a pair of twin lambs that Michael reckoned had only been born about 10 – 15 minutes before we drove past. I was hoping that we would actually see a birth but I guess they wouldn’t have been particularly relaxed with us driving around and about J While we were in the paddock one of the twins wandered off, following a cow, and got far enough away that it couldn’t find its mum again (who hadn’t noticed as she had the other lamb to look after), so Michael ended up opening the car door, picking it up by its hind legs and driving along with it hanging out the door back to its mum. The kids thought this was very strange but it was because he didn’t want to get his scent on it which would mean its mum would abandon it. Apparently Merino sheep only have 4 hours within which to imprint with their babies (and after that they abandon them), whereas other sheep have 48 hours or something like that, so that first period is very important for Merinos.

We also had a look at the shearing shed and at all the different thickness fleeces in there as they sell superfine Merino wool between 12 – 18 microns – for all those people out there wearing Armani or Zegna suits, they might be made out of Michael’s wool! A lot of Australian wool producers were each asked to donate 100 grams of wool apparently to make into Australia’s present for the upcoming royal wedding, so we also saw the bale of wool that some of it came from which was interesting from a trivia point of view.

Twelve Apostles

Unfortunately Bends café was closed…. But in compensation the thermal cooker worked just fine and we had a lovely hot stew waiting for us. Yesterday (Saturday), we packed up in the morning, which is still taking us quite a while, and drove to the Twelve Apostles which weren’t very far away, followed closely by Loch Ard Gorge.

After seeing so many photos of the Twelve Apostles it was kind of surreal to see actually them, but also very impressive. They’re so dramatic, in fact the whole coastline along there is so dramatic that I’m so glad we stopped in. I love the way that, even when you feel like you’re inland, you turn a corner and can suddenly see cliffs and the sea again. It was kind of funny to be driving along what seemed like pretty quiet roads, and to suddenly get to the Twelve Apostles where there’s a huge car park, café and underpass to get across the road to where crowds of people from lots of different nationalities were all snapping away or setting up their tripods.

Loch Ard Gorge was possibly better than the Twelve Apostles, probably because there’s a bit of a story behind there being a shipwreck there with just two survivors (Tom and Eva), a graveyard housing those who didn’t make it, a great lookout to an archway and Thunder Cave, which is a huge sea cave you can look down on and watch as the waves crash against the sides, making a noise just like a thunderclap. It was slightly disconcerting there to realise that we’d just walked over the top of the cave, when there’s lots of signs around talking about decaying and crumbling paths… there was also a little beach you could walk down to and imagine the survivors and bodies being washed ashore. The surf was huge, not sure if it’s like that all year ‘round, but I can see how a boat could be smashed up against the rocks pretty easily. After lunch and refuel in Port Campbell we drove up to Hamilton, to arrive and set up in Michael and Cathy’s beautiful garden just before dark. The kids were in heaven and headed straight for the couch in front of the TV for some vege time. Conor struggled today with a bit too much sightseeing – in his words, he wouldn’t mind seeing some volcano stuff, but ‘no more cliffs, mum’. There’s a full house here with two of Michael and Cathy’s kids, her sister Chris and husband Dennis, so we had a lovely roast lamb dinner around the table all together last night, all toasty by the wood stove. Apparently there’s quolls, bandicoots and foxes which visit the garden at night but we didn’t hear a thing. They also have guinea fowl which greeted us when we arrived yesterday afternoon, chickens, heaps of dogs and countless sheep and cattle, which are apparently lambing and calving at the moment so the kids are hoping that we’ll get to see some up close.