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                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Mt Gambier
 



 


South Australia
With Mum (Marilyn) and Luke

I am a naughty boy!
I went on holidays without taking my kombi. It was an adulterous pleasure to drive a car with cruise control, air-conditioning, acceleration, power this, power that, 4WD, adjustable suspension etc etc.
However I did so miss my Kombi. So it only does 30 up those hills on the freeway but it is so much more organised for going camping than out the back of a wagon. Having to search through everything looking for that one thing and having to pack and unpack every night is not the way to camp.

But on with the story....

We Started Our trip to South Australia at Mt Gambier.

The area around Mt Gambier has limestone as its foundation. In some places the limestone has been eroded away by water forming large sinkholes and caverns. Shown to the right is a large sinkhole that has been turned into a park and garden.
 

Paths lead down to the bottom and you could walk in behind the large creeper. The whole place was amazing.



  Mt Gambier is also home to the Blue Lake and the tower shown above and left. The Blue Lake is a bright vibrant blue during the summer months, thus the name.

 

 

 

 

This is my brother Luke. He doesn't like having his picture taken and tried to get my camera off me after this shot. We won't tell him its on the web...would I do that???

 

  Before heading North we stoped of to visit the towns of Southport and Robe. The costal scenery was spectacular, but the sun was on its way down and we still had a long drive before setting up camp for the night.


 

  The first night we camped on the beach at 42 Mile Crossing in the Coorong National Park.

The Coorong NP covers the area of the younghusband peninsula, a 100km line of sand dunes separated from the mainland by a narrow stretch of water where the Murray River meets the sea.

 

 


  We took the Subaru and it is does have  constant-four-wheel-drive and pneumatic suspension but we didn't risk taking it  across the dunes to the beach. (I would have if mum wasn't there, but it is her car.) So we packed up what we would need and hiked the kilometre to the beach.

  Wood fires were allowed, but only on the beach between the high and low tide marks.

  The Giant Crayfish at Naracoorte. When I was 3 years old  I went on holidays with My parents to South Australia. I was too young to still  remember it, but I have grown up hearing about these places and seeing the photos in the family album, so it's been great to see these places and how they've changed.

  We crossed on the ferry at Wellington and headed east to explore the towns of the Fleur Peninsula.

  Right: A photo of me on the train in the Park at Victor Harbour....

            ....I can still fit my feet in the wheel...just.

 

  After playing on the train  Toot Toot , we caught the horse drawn tram to Granite Island across the  jetty that stretches from the main land to the island.

  On Granite Island There was heaps to see and do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someone had carved a seal into one of the granite boulders.


  While in Adelaide we went for a drive out to Birdwood to checkout the National Car Museum. There were heaps of cars old and new, but I was very disappointed....there weren't any kombis :-(

This is a sculpture of a fossilized car.
  On the way to the car museum we stopped and climbed the Giant Rocking Horse.

  While driving back from Birdwood I saw a sign to
"The Whispering Wall" I had no idea what this was, so took a detour and found out.

This dam wall was one of the first concrete dam walls of this design ever built. During construction it was discovered that even the faintest whisper could be head clearly over a hundred metres away on the other side of the wall. The concurved concrete and the water bounce the sound wave around the wall

Just like a giant set of plastic cups and string

It was fun when other people came and where still reading the sign to see what all the fuss was about. You could start talking to them and they wouldn't know where you where and you could clearly hear the surprise in the voices


 

On the way home we stopped in Waterfall Gully not far from the Eastern Freeway. This was another place we had visited way back in 1980. I wished I had more time it would have been an excellent place to go bush walking.

 

Right: Me and Mum September 1980

Below: Me and Mum February 2004


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Anyone is welcome to come with me on my adventures. I am flexible about when and where I go, so if you have any good ideas let me know.
 


                See what you are missing?


  This site records the odyssey of Stuart Taylor
  and his Kombi  Adventures, with Peter Oakenful
  or whoever else wants to tag along.
  We are based in Bendigo Victoria.

 

 

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