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Published: December 2nd 2022
1. Tantanoola Caves
The amazing Tantanoola CavesWe saw a kangaroo!!! But this was quite late in the day, there’s plenty more to cover I just couldn’t contain my excitement.
Starting at the beginning…. What a beautiful day, can you believe this is the first day we’ve woken up to clear blue skies and sunshine since we arrived! It was 20 degrees at the start of the day and we finally reached the heady heights of 30 degrees today. Summer is finally here – to be fair the locals did say summer starts on 1
st December, they were almost right!
Today we were leaving Mount Gambier and heading over to Victor Harbour. This is quite a long trek, just over 5 hours drive, around 270 miles without our diversions to see places on the way. We ended up taking about 8 hours in total – but with the sun shining, the windows down and the cool breeze it made the long drive much nicer.
Our first stop was ‘Big W’, which is basically like The Range at home, why on earth did we stop here I hear you ask, well we saw an advert on TV for some felt feet that fit over chair legs
2. Tantanoola Caves
The 'Chocolate Fountain' in Tantanoola, its the Dolomite in the calcite that gives it the colour and Roy wanted to get some for home!
Anyway, our first ‘real’ stop was Tantanoola Cave, this cave was discovered by the teenage son of a family who owned a house nearby. The story is that he sent his ferret into a hole to catch a rabbit for dinner, but it didn’t come back out. So he crawled into the hole and found a cavern where he could stand up – but as it was pitch black and he dislodged a rock which he heard fall a long way then splash, he climbed back out and returned with his older brother and torchlight.
After the family discovered the cave, within days they had opened it up for tours, which unfortunately has caused irreparable damage to the cave floor and also some of the stalactites which were snapped off and possibly sold as souvenirs. Eventually, the age of health and safety arrived, and they couldn’t continue their tours as the cave was deemed to be too dangerous, so it was sold to the nature park conservation people who have now made it accessible (it’s the only wheelchair accessible cave) and protected it from further damage.
Even with the
3. Tantanoola Caves
One of the cut off Stalactites in the cave, the small piece on the end is the new growth which has taken 95 years to develop! history of damage done, this cave was absolutely amazing, the sheer number of stalactites and stalagmites was unbelievable, never seen anything like it. It was so different to the other caves we saw yesterday. The tour took about 15mins, then you had the remaining 10-15mins to explore the cave at your leisure, we ended up being the last people in there which meant you could fully appreciate the silence. It’s an amazing place.
With a lot of driving ahead of us, we got back on the road and continued along the Southern Ocean Road, our next stop was Beachport. As we drove in we spotted they had their Christmas decorations on the lampposts, much like in the UK, there was a Christmas tree, a Christmas bell, a Christmas crab…. wait…. what!?! A Christmas crab?? Further down they had a Kangaroo too!
Beachport was a little seaside town, with a really, really long jetty! The sea looks a stunning shade of light blue/turquiose. We stopped here for Roy to get a coffee and eat our lunch.
Back on the road again, we travelled through Robe, then through Mount Benson where once again we saw miles and miles of
3. Beachport Jetty
The wooden Jetty at Beachport, a popular holiday destination vineyards. We didn’t stop, but drove through Kingston and past another lighthouse (which was closed so we couldn’t climb this one!)
We’ve noticed as we’ve moved further west that the landscape has changed somewhat, it seems much dryer here, like they’ve had even a fraction of the rain Sydney and Melbourne have suffered over the past few months.
Moving on, we spotted a sign that there was no fuel for 144km, they weren’t wrong, you entered Coorong National Park which was a seemingly endless straight road with absolutely nothing on it other than bushes and trees! Oh and dead kangaroo’s, it was pretty awful with the windows down, the smell of decomposing kangaroo is not going to be made into a scented candle any time soon!
The 144km road seems to be dragging a bit, we did see a very strange looking lizard crossing the road, which we had to take evasive action to miss. I’ve no idea what it was, it was really chunky looking from head to tail – we’ll have to google it and try to identify what it could’ve been. It was too sudden to get a picture of it though.
Then
5. Lobster at Robe
A massive lobster beside the Southern Ocean Road we saw something quite exciting, no not the kangaroo just yet, patience! It was a flock of pelicans flying over the road and circling around. Having seen these on Phillip Island being fed and swimming in the sea, we knew how large these birds were, so it was incredible to see them majestically flying around. We pulled over, Roy got his long lens out and managed to capture a few of them flying above us before being swarmed by flies!
At the end of the very, very long road – we reached Meningie, where we spotted an Ostrich which Roy just had to climb on for a photo. I think I should’ve filmed Roy getting onto it, which was far more amusing!
After that the road became the Mighty Murray Way, we travelled through Wellington only to come across the end of the road….. fortunately, there’s a car ferry which takes you to the other side of the Murray River. This was a pleasant surprise and made this stage of the journey more interesting.
Just as we were getting a little bored again, we spotted the Rusticana winery which said its cellar doors were open, so we
6. The ferry at Wellington
The road at wellington doesnt cross the Murray River, thank heaven for the free ferry drove in and wandered up to the cellar door which was locked! We were heading back to the car when we spotted a woman walking towards us who had come to open up for us. They specialise in, of all things, horseradish! But we were there for wine, so after a having a taste, we purchased a couple of bottles and headed back to the car. She also pointed out the charred remains of a tree they’d made a feature of, it’s also the winery logo, it’s what was left of a large Red Gum tree after it was hit by lightning.
Back on the road, this is when it happened! A very large grey kangaroo emerged out of the bushes to our right and went bouncing across the road before disappearing into the bushes on the left. Fortunately, it was behind the car that was in front of us, and far enough in front of us that it didn’t cause an accident! I can see why so many are hit, you have no warning they are going to appear. We love seeing these animals in their natural environment, it feels so much better than seeing them in parks.
8. Cape Jaffa Lighthose
The Cape Jaffa Lighthouse museum in Kingston That excitement over, we passed through another little town, Milang, which had some old railway carriages on display, but as time was ticking on we pushed on, heading to Goolwa. This seemed like a nice place, we had a quick drive round and saw some paddleboats, but we were keen to get to our final destination as it was getting quite late.
When we got to Victor Harbour, we were glad we’d pre-booked our room at the Comfort Inn motel, as there was a street party going on and a large chunk of Main Street was closed. We did manage to get to our motel OK thankfully, and once checked in went for a wander around. The party had been going on since 2pm so was starting to wind down.
After grabbing a fish and chip dinner we went for an evening stroll to walk it off a bit. To add to our wildlife tally for the day, we saw what we believe was an albatross, it was massive! And had a very distinct beak. It happened so quickly we weren’t able to get a photo unfortunately.
To end the day we took a sunset stroll
9. Cool Van in Kingston
Couldn't resist this cool van in Kingston down the causeway to Granite Island. It was a little disappointing to see they’ve replaced the original timber causeway with a new concrete version. I can see why as the wooden one must’ve been hard to maintain, but it does seem a shame. We spotted a few seals on the way over, well not the whole seal unfortunately, just the odd flipper poking out of the sea. They were waiting on the arrival of dinner, aka the little penguins!
That’s it for today, but there’s lots to look forward to exploring here tomorrow.
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