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Published: March 11th 2007
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Naracoorte Caves
The fossils don't make for very interesting photos, so here are some stalactites instead We entered into the state of South Australia (which is officially the driest state of the driest continent on earth) and stopped in at Naracoorte, where the caves have a world heritage listing due to the 500,000 year old fossils that have been found here. All the people are very excited at the moment as they have just discovered some new information that could change some previous thoughts about the extinct animal fossils found there - our guide couldn’t tell us what it was though, as it is top secret! She kept joking that if we knew then we wouldn’t be allowed to leave the cave….we’re not so sure that she was joking though! We also went in the evening to stake out the Bat Cave, which supposedly houses 80,000 bats which all come out at dusk - we had visions of it being a fabulous spectacle as they all fly out at the same time (like in a TV documentary), however after about an hour of waiting we must have only seen about 12 bats, so we returned to the campsite feeling a bit foolish!
From here we headed back out to the coast to the second biggest town
Mt Gambier
The town with no people, but a lovely Blue Lake in SA, Mt Gambier. It only has a population of approximately 23,000 but they all seemed to be in hiding somewhere. It was unnervingly quiet, even more so after all the shops had closed at lunchtime - on a Saturday! It does have the most amazing “Blue Lake” though, which sits in an old crater, it has an average depth of 70m & is used as the town’s main water supply - the colour is a vivid cobalt blue, but no-one can really explain where the colour comes from. There are also “sinkholes” in the town, which are huge holes caused by the dissolution of the limestone. You can actually cave dive under the town - perhaps that is where everyone was hiding….
Further along the coast the Coorong Lake National Park skirts the coastline - supposedly a haven for water birds, including pelicans, although unsurprisingly we didn’t see a single one - we had been trying to spot one all day, driving to all of the lookouts and it wasn’t until we pulled into the campsite that evening which backs onto a lake that wasn’t in the national park, we saw lots of them - typical!
Our
Pelicans
At last! next stop was the Fleurieu Peninsula, where we were going to do some scuba diving to see the beautiful weedy sea dragon, we saw them in the aquarium in Barcelona and you only find them around this area of Australia. We headed to the small town where we had been advised to go, only to find that the lady was out visiting her mum (so the notice said on the door!) and that she’d be back tomorrow. There wasn’t anything else to do there, so not really wanting to spend the night we headed off. We found ourselves in the McClaren Vale, a wine region still in the peninsula. The following day, in order to save money (you can guess whose idea that was!) we walked to some of the wineries. We had a fantastic day and treated ourselves to a couple of nice bottles (not sure how we are going to go back to drinking the boxed variety that we have been buying!) - after talking to one of the ladies, she came rushing out after we had left to present us with another bottle for free! That’s just how nice everyone has been to us so far (either
McClaren Vale
One of the many vineyards that or she just felt sorry for us - we are the only people that she knows that have ever walked round!), also at the campsite another older couple fixed our slidey door on the campervan as it had been squeaking. She did tell us that they call our little van the “divorce wagons” as that’s what happens to most people who have them..if only we'd known before we rented it...!
We arrived in Adelaide and for once had timed it right to coincide with their Fringe Festival that started the same day (up until now we have missed absolutely everything of any interest, oh apart from the sheep dog trials!). Apparently it is second only to the Edinburgh festival - we went to the opening night street party - it was funny as even though it was busy it was by no means crowded..they also had a fireworks “display”, but we have seen better sparkler shows! We've been to see four acts and by far the funniest was a guy from the UK - his name is Stephen K Amos, I'm sure he will be in Edinburgh this year and we can definitely recommend that you go and see him. We have enjoyed Adelaide, but it probably has something to do with what has been happening as normally it may be a little bit quiet..like most places!
We head off tomorrow up towards the Northern Territory - everyone delights in telling us that this is the worst time of year to go as a) it is incredibly hot, and b) a couple of weeks ago they had rain so the flies are extremely bad just now - can't wait!
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