Australia - Day 13 Road Trip

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Today we spent driving from Adelaide to Mount Gambier. We stopped in the sleepy little town of Murray Bridge to get maps and tourist guides for the Great Ocean Road. A woman there gave us lots of booklets on the area and suggested we take the southern "coastal" route from there rather than the highway, telling us that coastal routes are always more scenic. Well, after a couple of hours of seeing next to nothing we decided to turn inland a bit to the faster road. We hadn't seen any ocean at this point, but did see a pink lake and a green lake. The pink lake is due to a chemical produced by algae in the salt-water lake when water levels become low as a way to protect itself from UV rays. The green lake (it looked lime green to the naked eye) was deeper, so just the green algae was visible. It is also called the limestone coast, so the soil type combined with the salt water probably has something to do with it as well.

We also went off the highway (2 lanes) and drove east over to Coonawarra before heading south into Mount Gambier. This is a smaller wine district that is known for its Cabernet Sauvignon (the Barossa Valley is Shiraz country). We visited two wineries there--a newer one with beautiful grounds but undistinguished wines (at least the ones they were pouring) and one that was family-run for over 100 years with good wine but no attempt to make the site aesthestically pleasing. We'll take good wine over ambiance any day (although getting both is even better!).

It was getting very cold and windy when we pulled into the hotel. Mike told me he had booked us into a place called "The Barn" and that it had a steakhouse restaurant. I was expecting sawdust floors, cheesy cowboy motif and highway motel accommodations at that point, but was pleasantly surprised to find a modern, upscale facility with well-decorated rooms. The "Barn" was still on site, but not used as part of the facilities. We had a fantastic steak dinner and called it a day.

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Photos

Green Lake
Lake Albert

Days of Vines and Roses
Planting roses at the end of a row of vines is typical of the area. We were told it was done to detect viruses and pests, as they would show up on the roses first and then the vines could be treated for prevention.

Pretty in Pink
In the Balnaves rose garden