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Published: December 26th 2006
big lobster
say hello to larryBlog 9
This morning we did a bit of fossicking , I with my hammer David just poking around with a stick , of course he found a piece of opal , I made some more rubble. The opal fields at white cliffs are just like a moonscape, the easiest way to describe them ,is to take a dozen jam doughnuts , slice them in half so that the jam is in the middle and arrange them on a plate so that there are no gaps. At first I was puzzled as to why the hole , or mine shaft, was red but the soil that had been removed was startling white, apparently the sun had bleached the red soil white. I believe this ,the sun here is incredibly hot and relentless. ( ok you can eat the doughnuts now ) .Of course the opal fields go on for miles.
Soon it was too hot to continue poking around so we retired to the pub, there is only a pub , a shop/café a national park office, an art gallery ,underground motel ,and opal shop a school , and a few houses, some visible some dug into the rocks. There was
just Dave and I and one local ,we had a drink while asking the lady how long she had lived there. ‘’I’ve been living here happily for 30 years, it would drive me mad if I didn’t work ‘’The local said something to her, ‘’speak up she said ‘’put your bloody hearing aid in ,he said, ‘’its out the back’’ . We left them to it. Next stop the swimming pool, this was heaven, we then just sat back and relaxed, we were waiting for the sunset ,you can see it for 360 degrees and it is spectacular. Just then another camper arrived ( hello Roy and Joan ) I know they will be reading this. Let me introduce you, this is an amazing couple from England , picture Mrs Bucket’s husband from keeping up appearances , give him a beard and there you have Roy , mannerisms speech the lot. Joan is rather harder , a free spirit , fun , once worked for the national trust , going to die old and disgracefully, and a lover of the dry white wine , not as cold as it could have been ,in fact room temperature if your room was
big fish
say hello to murray over 30 degrees , but with an ice cube beautifully presented in a two piece plastic glass , they had detachable bottoms , perfectly acceptable , our second evening waiting for the sunset, had us all looking for her bottom on several occasions.(you will be pleased to hear we still have proper wine glasses. )
The first evening we saw a really spectacular sunset , and so we retired , the next day we decided we go to the pub for lunch , Dave Roy and I had a meat pie , Joan wanted a toasted cheese sandwich , the woman still didn’t have her hearing aid in, they only did cheese and ham toasted sandwiches , Joan would have to remove the ham herself , did she want to do it before it was toasted ?it got too complicated Joan had ham and cheese.. We all then went to the national park display , I ask why the building was so out of character with the surrounding area, why some of the abandoned derelict buildings couldn’t have been utilized ? Apparently it was based on a wool shearing shed this had once been a sheep area. Joan asked if
red red road
in the middle of nowhere the rangers did guided walks of the local flora and fauna , I asked if she was mad , where was she going walking in this heat, it must have been over 40 degrees. The lady in the national parks office invited us all to join them at the swimming pool at 5.00clock for the arrival of father Christmas, he arrived on a fire truck, all the children were there, this brings home to you how small and isolated these places are. There were 15 children , those up to the age of eight had never seen rain , some of the older ones had once and remember being scared , they didn’t know what it was , they didn’t like it. Can you imagine reaching the age of 8 and never seeing rain. It was nice to see , these children were children not mini adults , not materialistic , innocent, they sang carols to father Christmas . What a wonderful place to grow up in , there was no police no crime all the children were looked out for by everyone , and they all knew each other and played like one big family . The next morning
cassowary
one big mean bird we decided Joan was a bad influence on us and so we would make our way back to Broken Hill then two days following the railway line towards Adelaide calling in at the new Jacobs Creek visitor centre and returning to Bethany wines in the Barrosa Valley. Joan and Roy were going to Cobra and then on to Brisbane for Christmas with her son.. (Have a good one Joan and Roy ).
At Broken hill we restocked with fresh meat and vegetables , after 200 kilometres we were stopped at a fruit fly check point and had the fruit and veg confiscated. ·Our next stop was Peterborough , here we visited a steam railway museum , the depot turntable is the only 3 gauge example in the world. At one time Australia had three different types standard gauge ,narrow gauge and broad gauge. On some journeys passengers would be required to change trains three times because different states had different gauge railway tracks . The town was called Petersburg, but during the war the name was changed to Peterborough because there was anti German feeling.
And so on through Jamestown and on to Burra this is a pretty little town
big mango
nice and juicy with more historic sights than you can shake a stick at .Burra was a copper mining town between1847-1877 , the population was mostly made up of Cornish miners, and this is reflected in the abundance of little stone Cornish cottages dotted around the landscape, many alas abandoned.
From here we go to Tanunda , home of Jacobs creek wine, we went to the new visitors centre, now here they had the chance of doing something really good , but there was a big hall with four television screens all showing something different and if all the screens were on at the same time you couldn’t hear what any of them said , also they expected you to stand for 2-3 hrs I guess if you worked your way through each presentation , I drifted into the tasting area grabbed a stool and watched the first screen. It was a bit Aesop’s fables. Had a drop of wine then moved on to Bethany wines, they hadn’t changed , then down to Handorf, this was very very touristy it was touristy 5 years ago and now it is even worse. I suppose one should never go back. We made our way to Strathalbyn to a small town called Finnis , we were going to see Gloria’s brother we hadn’t rung to say we were coming and were not surprised they were out when we arrived . The dog was home so they wouldn’t be gone for long , we parked halfway up the drive facing the gate and when they did arrive not 20 minutes later , Tony got out at the gate, he thought we were burglars , with the van loaded ready for a get away, he instructed Cheryl to park across us to stop us driving away , she drew level with us, Dave told her that Finnis Manor had been recommended as a good camping site. By whom she wanted to know , she hadn’t recognised us, Gloria we said. She laughed and drove on Tony was near now , ’’ you bloody found us again then, come in for a drink, ‘’we spent a lovely evening stayed overnight, the next morning we were on our way to Robe , on the way we stopped by Milang, this is another very small town, and its claim to fame is noted on a cairn , where the Murray river comes out into Lake Alexandrina ,and on the cairn is written Charles Sturt passed near hear in his whale boat in 1830.
And so to Robe , this area was home to the Boandik aboriginal tribe originally ‘’black Maggie’’ being the first to meet white men in Guichen bay in the 1830’s , these were probably whalers and sealers or sailors visiting the area prior to white settlement. In 1846 pioneers legalised there claims and the first sale of allotments took place , in 1847 it was declared a port and wool began to arrive for shipment within a few months, by 1860 Robe was ranked amongst the top three out ports in south Australia, I love this , ‘’Bullockies with their loads of wool travelled overland from Victoria and other areas of south Australia to Robe for weeks on end averaging only 40 klms per day. At times 50 wagons would be lined up for shipment to Europe. The town prospered and attracted many settlers many Irish female migrants and Scottish families arrived in 1855. On January 1857 a tall ship named Lake of Cakes sailed into Robe’s Guichen bay flying a British flag and carrying 264 Chinese passengers , this took the inhabitants of Robe by surprise , not only was the number greater than the inhabitants of Robe, but they had never seen a Chinese person before., at first they thought they were females because of their pigtails, the Chinese were headed for the goldfields of Victoria, the Victorian government had put a tax of 20 dollars for each Chinese passenger , but at Robe they could land for free. Robes industries were colourful one being a canning factory , they canned swans but marketed them as Robe geese , and parrots were marketed as Robe snipe.
In 1878 due to competition from other port Robe closed as a port and became a little country village with some interesting buildings preserved from its hey day. We are following the coast road next stop Woakwine Cutting (you wont see it on the map Rob we saw a sign pointing to it and Dave vaguely remembered reading it was worth seeing).A Mister M.C.McCourt had a very large swamp on his land , to drain it he and Mister McKintyre spent less than three years making a cutting 1 kilometre long and 28 to 34 metres deep at its deepest point, they removed 276,000 cubic metres of material with the aid of a caterpillar , tractor , drain ripper , Letourneau , ( don’t ask me , I don’t know either ) an 11 yard scrapper and some explosives, I must say it is an impressive sight. We also took a look at the land that was drained it is really good farming ground. It just goes to show if you fight the land you can sometimes win.
Beach port ,next stop it was very cold here , it has a stunning coastline and beautiful blue seas , it was the first night we stayed in the van as we were so cold.
Next we went to Mount Gambia the town is built on the slopes of an extinct volcano, the largest crater contains a lake which in the summer months turns a turquoise blue returning to grey around march, for once we were at the right place at the right time the water was an incredible colour, a short walk away was a shake hole , the planting made it look like the hanging gardens of Babylon, it was beautiful. Here at the tourist information was a replica of the ship ‘’ The Lady Nelson’’ in 1800 she was nicknamed her majesty’s tinderbox due to her size, she was the first ship to sail from the west through bass strait, in 1801-1802 port Phillip was discovered and explored. She was well used as a survey ship until 1824 when she accompanied HMS Tamar to establish the first white settlement on Melville island in the northern territory, on her second trip from the new settlement, in search of supplies, she called at the island of Babar, where the crew were murdered by natives and the ship run ashore and burnt. There was also a small hologram presentation.
From Mount Gambier we travel down the Prices highway to Nelson , It was here major Mitchell had hoped to find a deep harbour but instead found the Henty brothers had settled, but non the less did join them for a cup of tea. In another twist , Sturt’s brother I believe his name was Evelyn, settled on the land legally and had all the squatters kicked off including the Henty brothers.
Our next Port of call was port fairy, it was here on around December 10th 2006 that David Short had his ears lowered and his beard trimmed , before re-joining civilisation as you know it , we were now wending our way down the Great Ocean Road stopping off to wander down to the lookouts to see the rock formations carved by the sea, here we see a lot of Asian people with their backs to the attraction taking photographs of each other , we saw, London Bridge , some had fallen down , the arch the sentinel the bay of islands , and the grand finale , the 12 apostles of which we could count only 5 , but there was a small pile where once another could have stood, perhaps it could be renamed………………..
Our next stop was Barramunga at a camp site up in the hills here we met three charming youngsters a sister and two brothers Mark ,Matt and I can’t remember her name , I know she works at a tourist information centre. Thank you for allowing us to share your fire. This site would be chock a block over the next three weeks , one family were even spending Christmas there .We still can’t equate the heat , camping , sunshine and Christmas. We see the houses decorated , but it looks like they forgot to take the decorations down from the previous year. Schools are on holiday for 6 weeks , everybody goes camping , fishing ,surfing , but a lot of people will still cook the traditional roast turkey dinner , in fact that is what we shall be having at Sue’s. We stay the night at Barwon Heads near the sea and watch the pilot boats go out to guide the big ships through the rips and into Port Phillip Bay and on to Melbourne Harbour , one of the most dangerous bits of coast in the world and graveyard to many shipwrecks. To go full circle we go to Queenscliff and catch the ferry to Sorrento and arrive back in Melbourne, the air is thick with smoke from the bushfires in north Victoria.We shall be here until the new year , the van will be serviced , I shall also wash the curtains , and we will be more selective with our packing for the next trip in the new year. First stop Tasmania. Watch this space.
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terry short
non-member comment
give them hell..
gooday,it's terry or should i say kerry for you,only just found out about the fun,got blogg from micheal..really pleased your having a great time, and proud of you.. wish i could do the same..read all your bloggs.will keep watching for next entry..give em hell and take em by storm..