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Published: March 7th 2008
Well we have been on the road for 5 weeks today - and have covered a lot of miles since we left Perth on Feb 1st, over 6,000 kilometres in fact! Our rather speedy trip from Perth to Melbourne was mainly due to our decision to go to the Santana concert on the 26th and Alister arriving in Melbourne for the Grand Prix car race this coming Sunday. So after leaving the tip of the Eyre Peninsula, we drove up the east coast of the peninsula to a sleepy country town called Wilmington, just north of Port Augusta. Wilmington is nestled at the foothills of Mt Remarkable, and we stayed at the “Beautiful Valley” caravan park, which was rather nice - quiet and old fashioned, like the town itself. Like many of the camps we have stayed at so far, the bird life was prolific. We really enjoyed the Mt Remarkable national park which is high up on the range, and we did the Alligator Creek walk through a very narrow canyon of layered red cliffs. Wilmington itself consists of one very wide main street with 50’s style shops, a great café (the friendly owner presented us with a souvenir each
when we left, a “Beautiful Café” beer holder- and we only had a milk shake!), and a Toy Museum full of every imaginable toy and model from the 50s and 60s and lots of cobwebs too!
Our next stop was a town called Burra, in the midst of the wheatbelt area, it’s a very well preserved copper mining town, almost every house and building is historic! There were five “towns” in its heyday, and different groups of immigrants lived in each - eg. Welsh, Cornish … one of the interesting features was the miner’s dugouts - only 2 out of 1500 odd are left now - they were like hobbit’s caves dug out of the side of the creek bed.
After leaving Burra, the wheatfields changed to mallee scrub, then suddenly we were in the midst of vineyards and fruit trees - we had arrived in the “Riverlands” area of the Murray River. We stopped for the night on the banks of the Murray near Waikerie - it was a really nice stretch of water. We had a couple of days exploring this part of the Murray, the towns in this area, like Kingston on Murray, Berri, and
The Toy Museum at Wilmington
This guy has a large collection of real landrovers as well as over 300 model ones!Barmera are set around the river, and are all very pretty - and surprisingly there is quite a lot of water in the Murray! Around this area the fruit growing is huge - we have never seen anything like it, miles and miles of grapes, oranges etc. We visited Banrock Station winery, one of our old favourites from back home, it is set amongst a large wetland area, unfortunately it is dry at present, but a nice setting for the winery, good tastings, and the wine is very well priced. Had to get a few bottles!
From Barmera we drove to Melbourne, stopping for a day/night in the Grampians National Park. The Grampians were a real surprise - a very long mountain range that looms out of nowhere, literally it is in the midst of a large plain. The mountains are craggy, rugged peaks and the short walks in the park were spectacular. Lots of viewpoints over the lakes and peaks and a real “waterfall”, the McKenzie falls, which are actually the water supply to the whole of Horsham! We camped overnight at a national park camp, and were the only ones there, surrounded by mountains and with only
Main St, Jamestown
in wheatbelt country kangaroos for company, one even joined us for tea.
We stopped a couple of nights in Werribee, just out of Melbourne, but the campground wasn’t great, so after the Santana concert we moved across to a camp in north east Melbourne - set in bush with lots of birdlife, and spent a couple of days getting some stuff for the caravan and catching up on chores and shopping . Santana was great - an amazingly talented bunch of musicians headed up by Carlos Santana who was an amazing presence on stage -the vocals and the instrumentals from the whole group of 11 were quite outstanding. The weather in Melbourne was the coolest we have experienced so far - around 17 to 19 and quite cold at night. Quite a change from up to 40 in Coffin Bay the previous week! Will leave it here and update you on this week’s travel in the Gippsland region soon.
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