G’Day Possums

We set off from Meningie and, with a brief stop to pick up some supermarket provisions, started the drive to Mount Gambier on the South Australia/ Victoria Border.

The drive was quite boring to be honest. It started off quite nice, with views of the coastal lagoons

but quickly descended into barren nothingness for the majority of the journey.

Around halfway to Mount Gambier, we had our first “big” experience. In Australia, for some reason there are lots of “tourist attractions” (and I use the phrase very lightly) which are mainly just everyday objects but BIG! Our first experience of this came in Kingston, with Larry the Big Lobster!

We think Larry came about by accident – a rhyme on a plaque mentioned that it should have been built in feet and inches to fit upon the roof of the lobster restaurant but the company building it mistook the measurements for metres, hence the size! Still, it seemed to do the trick, with lots of cars turning up whilst we were there, and it did keep us occupied for several seconds.

We eventually arrived at Mount Gambier mid afternoon, and decided to stay for a couple of nights. This was because:

a. There is free internet here!
b. We have our very own en-suite toilet and shower!

It’s basically like having a shed at the side of the van with a toilet in it! Beats walking miles though like some of the other sites we’ve been to.

Mount Gambier is the second largest city in South Australia, and is built on the slopes of an extinct volcano. There’s several lakes formed from volcanic craters, which we’ll be looking at tomorrow, but today we waited until dusk and headed to Umpherston Sinkhole. This is a sinkhole created by volcanic activity, which now contains Victorian-era terraced gardens which are floodlit at night.

It was free to go into, and was a really nice way to end the day. We also got to see our first possum, as several live within the sinkhole.

Climbing back to ground level, we just had chance to act like big kids and go on the swings, before heading back to the campsite to spend hours uploading photos again!

A quick note on the weather in Australia. We’re now entering Autumn here, and we’re finding that the temperature in the daytime is quite hot, but at night it’s getting like the Arctic! Not going to be long at this rate before the jackets come out again!

Total Distance Driven In Australia : 3,436km