Mountains and water

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The morning came and we packed up the tent in record time and headed south towards our next goal "The Great Ocean Road". It would be far too far to drive their in one day, in fact i don't think it would actually be possible as Australia is just huge, so we scheduled in a couple of overnight stops before doing the Road.

We decided to make Mt Gambier our first stop as it has a few things to do/see. However we did make the odd detour along the way to places like Robe, not much to do but the beaches and scenery were worth the stop, even if the water is freezing! The biggest draw with Mount Gambier is the blue lake. We were a bit dubious to how a blue lake could be so facinating until we actually saw it. It was unlike anything we had seen before. Ok we have seen lakes before but the blue was soo intense. The pics don't do it any justice.

We managed to get in a beautiful campsite near the lake which was stunning with the mountains surrounding us and pitched the tent in a near gale as we were infact ontop of a mountain! We settled in and planned to do all the sights the next day which would include the lake, seeing some sunken gardens and a climb up a volcano!

Up early, the weather wasn't great but at least it was dry so we headed to the lookout points dotted around the lake to take a load of pics. It was only possible to go down to the lake side with a tour but we passed on this as we didn't see any point in paying to get closer to some water, however spectacular. We then headed to the sunken gardens which were basically where a cave had collapsed and the crater it left had been turned into a beautiful garden, which was nice, not spectacular just nice. We then headed to the Volcano which was a 25min drive from Mt Gambier, it was of course dormant. We parked up and headed out the car and up the path. We only got half way up and had to turn around, it may have been dormant but it seems it now emitts flies who love to go in your ears, nose, mouth and just generally be on or around you. You have to experience it to feel how bad it is and i cursed myself all the way down for leaving my cork hat in the car....Doh!

We headed from the Volcano a bit dejected at not having made it all the way but there was just no way, and got back to the campsite in good time. We had noticed there was a tennis court for use so we donned our sports gear (we don't have any so we. sorry I looked silly with my travelling gear on) but hoped to make up for this fact with my Federer like tennis skills from school. It wasn't until we started to play that we realised we hadn't played tennis since school which unfortunately was a long time ago so it took a while to get the hang of the game again. Oh and i mentioned earlier we were on top of a mountain so the wind just made the game hillarious. We did however get some much needed exercise and after a good shower and some food whilst watching some real tennis (the OZ open) we headed back to our tent for a good nights sleep before we headed off the next morning.

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