Friday 29 April 2011

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!

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