Volcanic Sights and Cheesy Bites

Volcanic Sights and Cheesy Bites
Mount Gambier, Australia

Mount Gambier, Australia

Whilst the end of the Great Ocean Road is technically a town called Allansford, we pretty much blinked and missed it and ended up in Warnambool. The town which thankfully had a cheap campsite for us to park La Toya and ride out the holiday weekend in peace whilst working on our advert to sell La Toya and to get some blog written, as moving day after day leaves little time for our usual admin. We had extremely low expectations of this campsite as it was the only cheap site not booked in the entire area of about 100km! But the gods were obviously looking down on us as it was perfect for what we needed. It had no pool or jumping pillow and hence no children, it only had about 30 pitches which were taken up with long term residents in huge mobile home type caravans so the kitchen and shower block were pretty much all ours. It turns out that this is a site favoured by Aussies who are having homes built or renovated. It was right in the middle of the town so it was a treat to be able to walk over to Woolworth to buy food for dinner without packing La Toya up for the day. So this was the final leg of the journey for our baby girl La Toya, Adelaide would be her final destination so it was time to write an advert, stick it in her windows and up on Gumtree ready for us to pass her on in Adelaide. Our three days in Warnambool flew by and it was a treat to be stopped for a few days, but with some blog written and La Toya advertised we did have a little time to see some of the best bits of the area. Our first outing was to Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve, an old volcanic crater which is now a park with lots of wildlife and walking trails. Having still not quite had my fill of Koalas and other marsupials I dragged Tim out for a walk. The crater is just astounding in itself, I imagine an aerial view would be just beautiful, but as you drive down into the crater the steep sides and the flat water covered lake at the bottom was just stunning. Thankfully Tower Hill didn’t disappoint, we were welcomed by a koala chilling in a tree at the picnic area, a huge emu chasing tourists to get their chips, an echidna (which I had been trying to check off my ‘seen in the wild’ list for weeks) and of course a few wallabies and lizards scooting around the place. After a hard days walking and wildlife spotting where better to go than to Cheese World. There was no question, with a name like that, I was going to love it here. It was as kitsch as we hoped with giant milkshakes everywhere and in the shop a huge stand full of all the different cheeses to taste. Unfortunately as it was a holiday weekend there were a family of sticky fingered poor mannered children, licking, double dipping and generally being horrid so we went for a milkshake in the hope that they would miraculously develop a lactose intolerance and leave. Thankfully they just left. Back in the shop, the harassed looking sales girl binned all the samples that had been poked and dribbled in and I browsed whilst she put out all new samples ready for me to be first in the queue before any sticky fingered dribblers could spoil my free treats. Thankfully I managed to get the first samples of everything and had a rather nice free lunch. Tim on the other hand couldn’t get the image of the dribbling lickers out of his head and passed on the samples but did give me permission to buy some cheese for later, yay! Rested, rejuvenated, organised and stocked with a rather fancy selection of cheddar cheeses it was time to hit the road again, across the border into South Australia and onwards to Mount Gambier. Of course we had to stop and get a photo of La Toya’s last border crossing, it was very convenient of South Australia to put the sign in such a convenient place. NSW and Victoria take note, us travellers like cheesy photo’s please make your border crossing more photo friendly. Mount Gambier had been high on our list of places not to miss since we started our planning. The home to the Blue Lake. The Blue Lake is within an extinct volcano and is primarily bright blue due to the fact that the water is so highly filtered through the limestone walls of the volcano that it is perfectly clear and filtered which creates the blue colour. The blue does change throughout the year which is thought to be caused by the different layers in the water mixing due to temperature changes. No matter what time of year you visit you are pretty much guaranteed a beautiful view. We were treated to a stunning hot sunny day with the water glowing deep sapphire blue and fading to aqua at the edges. We were blown away at just how beautiful it was but locals we spoke to told us that it wasn’t looking its best at the moment, so I can’t quite fathom how it can look any more beautiful than it did! The Blue Lake is not just beautiful is it also the main water source . The lake is around 72 meters deep and each year provides 3,500 megalitres to the town. I was disappointed to discover that the water on our campsite (which practically overlooked the lake and water pumping station) was still so full of chlorine that I suspected my hair may turn green and fall out. Never one to miss out on a random tour, Tim discovered that we could go on a tour of the water plant, which involved a trip down in a glass elevator to the water pumping station. This tour is run every hour about 5 times a day and boy can you tell from the tone of the bored tour guide. He was literally on autopilot, droning on with his back to us walking so fast that we are jogging to catch up. The glass elevator was also a little disappointing as it actually was a normal elevator with a small window in the side! Nevertheless whilst we didn’t really hear anything the guide told us, we did get to see a different viewpoint of the lake and we turned on a pump which sprayed water back into the lake and created a pretty rainbow, nice. With so many lakes and caves and craters to see in Mount Gambier we didn’t have time to do it all so our last visit of the day was another spot which had been on our radar for a while. The Umpherston Sinkhole. So whilst its name doesn’t really do it justice, this sight also known as The Sunken Garden is just amazing. Originally a cave formed through the dissolution of limestone the roof eventually collapse creating a crater. In 1884 James Umpherston began to turn the crater into a retreat. He built stairs down into the crater and at that time when it was partially full of water he ran a boat trip around the crater for people to take in the views. When he died in 1900 the sinkhole fell into disrepair and it wasn’t until 1976 that the Woods and Forest department began to revive the sinkhole. By 1995 it was obtained by the City of Mount Gambier and was listed on the register of State Heritage sites. Thank goodness this little place was found and brought back to life as it is just stunning, quite literally it is a hole in the ground that has been turned into a garden retreat so wild and beautiful it just takes your breath away. There is an element of danger to a visit here as the nooks and crannies in the ever eroding lime stone are great little hidey holes for bees to build their hives which is exactly what they have done. I am slightly torn as to whether I am more in love with the Blue Lake or the Umpherston Sinkhole, but I can definitely add Mount Gambier to one of my highlights of Australia. What a great start to our final journey through the state. There was nothing particularly on our to-do list between Mount Gambier and Adelaide so we just randomly picked a town that looked good in the tour guides and found ourselves in Robe. Robe is a fishing village with a population of around 1,300. Like most places it had a bank, a food store, a pub and a fish and chip shop and not a whole lot else. Interestingly, During the Victorian gold rush in 1857, over 16,000 Chinese people landed at Robe to tr
avel overland to the goldfields. To reduce the number of Chinese immigrants Victoria had introduced a landing tax of £10 per person which was more than the cost of their voyage. The immigrants then walked the 200 miles from Robe to Ballarat and Bendigo. Robe was pretty and the chippy did a pretty good fish and chip dinner, but it was onwards again. We had planned to stay the night in Lake Albert so that we could see the Pink Lake, however we passed the point where the pink lake was meant to be and discovered a dried up muddy hole which I am sure is the home to a beautiful pink lake at the start of the summer when there has been a significant amount of rain. So we pushed on and headed to Adelaide with a couple of stops for big things, obviously!! What we didn’t realise about the final stretch of the trip was that it was going to be much like crossing the Great Dividing range again. The get into Adelaide we needed to first get through the Adelaide Hills through the Mount Lofty Ranges. La Toya as usual was amazing, we even overtook a few 10 tonne trucks limping up the hill and happily passed by the emergency slip ways for failing brakes. Our girl had done it, she made it all the way from Cairns to Adelaide with just a couple of small hiccups along the way. We love you La Toya!!! Booked into the Big4 Adelaide Shores campsite we had one job to do…. Find La Toya a new family……wish us luck!!