Crossing the Border

Goodbye Brussels Sprouts

Long straight roads in Victoria

Beach at mouth of Fitzroy River, SA, mussels growing on bamboo

Fitzroy River at sunset

Don't think this cyclist is going anywhere.  Beachport.

Beachport Jetty

Wild waves straight from the Great Southern Ocean

Beautiful, balletic Codrington windfarm.  Unlike Joe Hockey, we love them!

Panorama from Bowman Scenic Drive

Field of Gazanias beside Pool of Siloam, which is reputedly seven times saltier than the sea.  

I see our last blog finished in Warrnambool, so on we travelled through Port Fairy (well known for its yearly music festival), a particularly pretty little town on the coast to a free camp on the Fitzroy River approximately 40km east of Portland.  We had intended to stay 1 night but it was such a lovely place that we ended up chained to the spot for 4 nights.  We were right at the end of a dirt road, next to the river, and a short walk from a magnificent beach, which we never did get to the end of on our morning’s walk.  There was an ulterior motive for staying so long in one spot too and that was to work our way through the fruit and veges on board so that we didn’t have to throw away too much at the SA Border.

Our last night in Victoria was spent in another free camp in Dartmoor, one of the neatest small towns we’ve been through.  There was a very large and well treed (and koala-ed) paddock on the edge of town, beautifully grassed, and sparsely populated with Grey Nomads.  We had a very quiet night and indeed it was the last night we’ve needed to run the diesel heater.  After a wet and cold start to our trip through Victoria, we seem to have run into T-shirt days and warm-ish nights.

So, Photo No. 1 shows our grand entry to South Australia on the A1.  Much  to my chagrin, I was left with 1 sweet potato, 1 onion, 2 carrots, 2 apples and a small bag of Brussels sprouts.  There was no way I was ditching a beautiful Cox’s Orange Pippin apple from Tasmania, so we ate those sitting in the van in front of the quarantine bin (which for some unfathomable reason was located 6 km inside the SA border).  I am always loth to throw away good food, but the fine for non-compliance far outweighs the cost of our left over veges, so into the bin they went. I've often wondered what happens to the poor rejected fruit and veges in these bins; methinks that if I were a swaggie, I would wait by the bin for my daily needs!

Our next stop was Mt Gambier, equidistant from Adelaide and Melbourne, and the major service centre for the Limestone Coast.  A very pretty town it is, with all the conveniences you could want including a Bunnings (for the extra essential hooks Ray keeps putting up) and a Ford dealership (to replace a blown fuse).  The Central Caravan Park lived up to its name, so only a block’s walk to Woolies one way, and the quilting shop in the other!  We normally try to avoid caravan parks, but this one came highly recommended, and apart from being centrally located, was small, immaculately clean and very well run.  The other advantage of course is meeting other travellers and gaining information on the road ahead.  We met two lovely ladies from Port Augusta, and they gave us all the information we needed on quarantine regulations for the next part of our trip.

For the record, the Limestone Coast covers an area of approximately 21,310 square kilometres in the south-eastern corner of SA.  It stretches south from the Coorong National Park to the Victorian border.  It also includes inland pastoral districts and the Coonawarra Wine district.

We could have stayed much longer in Mt Gambier, but that’s true of most of the places we’ve been so far.  Instead we opted to travel on, so took the left fork and the road less travelled through Millicent to Beachport, with its 772 metre jetty on Rivoli Bay.  What a find!  The coastline here is spectacular and rugged with a great scenic road winding for miles north from the town with lots of lookouts along the way. It helped that the day was windy, so big waves on the rocks, coming straight from the Southern Ocean.  Stunning scenery and we are tonight ensconced in another free camp just behind the dunes, with the wind howling and the rain starting again, but with the promise of a warm day tomorrow.

Beachport was named on 23 May 1878 for the then British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Michael Hicks Beach, 1^st Earl St Aldwyn.  It is also possibly the location of the first casualties of WW2 on Australian soil.  On 12^th July 1941 a local fisherman discovered and towed to Beachport a German sea mine either laid by the raider Pinguin or the minelayer Passat.  The following day, two Able Seamen, Thomas Todd and William Danswan, part of a three man Rendering Mines Safe team, were killed when a wave lifted the mine and caused it to explode on the beach while they were attempting to defuse it.  A monument now stands in the town to honour them.

Tomorrow it's Robe and Kingston, at the southern end of the Coorong.  Coincidentally, 7.30 SA tonight had a piece on Sunland Holiday Village, Robe, Australia's first (and still the only) ocean beach nudist resort.  They offer "quiet and secluded campsites for your total relaxation" and all guests are expected to participate "when conditions are suitable".  I can't imagine how conditions in Autumn/Winter could be suitable so I think perhaps we will be looking elsewhere for a campground!