David and Cassie's Great Australian Trip Part 3

David and I got up fairly early in Adelaide, got some instructions from the very nice guy at the hostel, and then headed out. We had to find gas and a Bunnings to buy some more butane cans for our camp stove, but were then on our way towards the Flinders Ranges. We stopped off at an info desk along the way and found that we couldn't really make the Flinders before dark, so we stopped a bit early at Melrose, which is at the base of Mount Remarkable, which we also thought would be good to see. We wanted to hike up to the top, and got a late start, but THIS TIME we were equipped with a head lamp and plenty of water. We made it to the, somewhat disappointing summit (the view wasn't that remarkable because of all of the trees) just before sunset; luckily we'd had lots of amazing views on the way up. We headed down, and again went down the wrong trail, and we couldn't understand how we did it, but it was as simple as we hadn't realized coming up that there was another trail going down, and we were immersed in good conversation, so didn't catch it. Luckily we hit a bit we REALLY didn't recognize, otherwise we could have been in trouble when the sun went down! Maybe not, all trails lead back to Melrose, it would have just been confusing and disconcerting. We hiked back up and got on the right track, which all in all was only about 20 mins out of the way, and we had got some really neat views of the sunset that we otherwise wouldn't have got, so it was alright.
That did mean that we had to hike about 2 hours down in the dark, but luckily we brought the headlamp and so, even though it was slower goings, it was safe. Oh, and I have to mention that it smelled AMAZING along the trail, and so many different smells!







I gave making biscuits over a fire a try, which didn't work as well as I had hoped, but they were alright. It was really cold and our fire coals wasn't cooking our food well, so we moved to the kitchen to finish up. Next morning had some showers and moved out.

Headed up to Flinders, and found out that the best, cheapest bush camping was up north a bit, so we drove up the bitumen road (paved road) until the dirt turn off; with a nice view stop on the way... we just missed the crappy bad weather, which was coming in behind us. The dirt road was quite pot hole-y but we've been driving on a lot of that lately, but there was one section that was mostly covered in water that we weren't sure about crossing, but we made it (after I got out to make sure it looked safe). We camped at Brachina Gorge East campground, which was right along a river bed, and it was beautiful. There were no trails, so we bush bashed our way around making our own trail, but went towards the road so as not to get lost. We went along the gorge, which was amazing. We saw lots of dead kangaroos, and even one on the rock, which kind of looked like it had a bad hop, and it turned out it was actually two! There were bones and dead kangaroos everywhere, and not just along the road, which we thought was interesting. We did see lots of alive animals though, and some of those were yellow-footed rock wallabies!! They were so cute, and so close!





Storm rolling in behind us




Look closely and you can see a rock wallaby in both of these rock pictures!

We saw the sunset from atop a hill, which was amazing. Our night proved to be VERY windy, which meant that we didn't get a great sleep because the tent shaking kept waking us up, and we were slightly concerned our fly was going to be blown away, but it was still there in the morning. We left there and did one more hike on the way out to see some aboriginal rock paintings. We didn't end up doing the hike up to see the Wilipena Pound because it was a 4 hour hike return, and we were hoping to camp past Port Augusta tonight, and because the clouds were rolling in and we didn't think we'd have much of a view once we got to the top as it was.







After we passed Hawker, we stopped along the way to Quorn to go on another hike to see three aboriginal rock painting sites, and it was a lovely 1 hour hike. When we got to Quorn we went into the Quandong Café and had some lunch along with a quondong cheesecake, which had been recommended to us. A quondong is a type of bush tucker (food) and is referred to as the dessert peach. Delicious.

We went to the desert botanical gardens here at Port Augusta, which were very neat, being laid out along the local landscape, and we're now in a Mackers in Port Augusta for internet. We figured we'd get some 50 cent ice cream cones and internet to waste some time until after sunset before moving on to Kimba, where we plan on staying tonight, in order to avoid kangaroos on the road. They are crepuscular and very dangerous for cars... we were told not to be on the roads between 4 and dark because it's not if, it's when you hit a kangaroo if you drive then.

Have to go, when we get better internet there will be pictures to come.
-Cassie

David and Cassie's Great Australian Trip Part 2

Driving up the Coorong was neat, but we didn't get to stop and see as much of it as we'd hoped. There was a turn off where we learned about the Chinese coming to the area for the big gold rush in Melbourne, but they came through S.A. in order to avoid the 10 pound tax that they got if they came directly into VIC. 62,000 Chinese arrived in the VIC goldfields, of those 48,000 made it back to China; these numbers don't take into account the ones that died on the way there; the remaining 14,000 stayed or died. (pics: The circular cut out by the water was the cutting used for the well you see in another picture. The hole is a wombat burrow)






It was a neat area, the Coorong, if you look at the map below, is a very long stretch of national park that has a very long saltwater "lake" in between the mainland and the ocean. We found out after got to the info desk at Strathalbyn that we could have driven across it to Goolwa, but we hadn't seen that on any maps, otherwise we would have!


To get to Strathalbyn from Wellington we had to take a little ferry across the river, that was neat (see picture below). After visiting the info desk we decided to drive down to Goolwa as we had previously planned. We had started thinking about going straight to Adelaide cause we hadn't seen a whole lot that would interest us down in the Fleurieux Panninsula that didn't cost money (like wine tasting and oyster eating), and we wanted to have plenty of time in Flinders Ranges after we left Adelaide. The sun was starting to go down, but we had a lovely drive to Goolwa and even drove onto Hindmarsh Island and saw the Murray Mouth, the mouth into the ocean. We then drove down to Victor Harbor and took that road up to Adelaide, which by the time we got about half way up it was completely dark, which was a shame cause it looked like it was some really neat country!




Picture of the area


Pictures (Hindmarsh Island):, the Murray Mouth, a shot of the sunset from the beach on the island, and a view from driving across the bridge from the island.





We stopped at a Mackers (McDonalds) to use the internet and we called a hostel in Adelaide, and we're glad we did cause the manager was just about to leave for the night! We secured a room and he gave us the code to get in and told us where he'd put the key, very nice man. We got to the VERY nice, and VERY clean hostel (Hostel 109 for any of you who plan on going to Adelaide) around 8:30 and got settled and cooked dinner. We ended up paying for a 4 share room (two sets of bunkbeds) but we ended up getting it all to ourselves for two nights!

On Saturday it was raining all day, but nevertheless we got up and went to the local market, which is amazing for food, and got some brekkie and some fruit/veg for the next leg of our trip (since we had to cook up/chuck out all of ours at the S.A. boarder). Awesome prices! We went back to the hostel and did some Skype-ing, then went and got some lunch at Chopstix and then to the botanical gardens, which even though it was sprinkling a bit was very nice. It's actually been quite warm despite the rain. Went back to the hostel and relaxed for the rest of the evening. We had a lovely day!!

Now we're off again to the Flinders Ranges!!

David and Cassie's Great Australian Trip Part 1

Since the internet I'm getting is often slow, I might not be able to put as many pics up as I'd like, so if you don't see any up when you read a post, check back later and there might be some. :)

David and I left Sunday June 26th from Ballarat, through Geelong where we checked out the area in which I used to live and saw all of the changes, and then headed South through Torquay on to the Great Ocean Road. We spent our first night in Cape Otway at Blanket Bay campsite outside of Apollo Bay, VIC. Our campsite was very wet, so no fire making, but we had a trail down to the beach and the rocks there were amazing, so were the shells!! That night there were two other people camping near us, but overall it was pretty quite. David and I went for a walk on the beach and at night the stars were amazing, and we just stared at the Milky Way for a while. The next morning there were some wallabys about and an amazing sunrise.






The following day we hiked around Cape Otway a bit and then drove up to Laver's Hill where we got some gas before going to the Otway Fly. It was $22 each, which we decided after doing it was worth it. It's a really neat walk, and it's amazing to be up so high. There are 3 main types of trees in that area: the Mountain Ash, which is the tallest and used to grow up to 100 meters (330 feet) but now only grow to be about half that size in that area, the Blackwood, and the Myrtle Beach. The spiral viewing tower is at about 47 meters, so is only half as tall as the Mountain Ash trees used to get, which is incredible!






After that we went to find our campsite, near Beech Forest. We spent the night alone, and the area was very wet, in the morning we even found leeches on our tent! We have found that because of all of the wetness, the camp stove we bought was one of our best purchases and it has served us very well. We went for a wonderful walk to some more waterfalls near our campsite in the morning, and then headed back towards the Otway Fly to do the Triple Falls walk, which was highly suggested by someone in Lavers Hill. We then went back through Lavers Hill and headed towards the Twelve Apostles.




There were still quite a few tourists at the Twelve Apostles, even in winter (mostly asian), which kind of surprised me. We also briefly visited Loch Ard, but decided that since we planned on camping near Port Campbell anyway we could just come back and see the rest of Loch Ard the next day since it wasn't far away. The bad thing about doing this trip is winter is the limited amount of daylight (the sun rises around 7:30 AM and set around 5:30 PM). We spent the night at a caravan park in Port Campbell, which was nice because we got laundry, and a nice warm kitchen, internet, and showers.


The next morning we got up at 7:30 and then took a nice walk on some of the trails around town and caught the sunrise up over the town, and saw a guy surfing, and though he must be crazy cause it was VERY cold. We know it was at least 3˚C during the night, and that was around 10, so we think it got down to freezing.
We drove back to Loch Ard and saw the rest of that before moving on to Warrnambool where we looked at the Deakin campus there to see what it was like, and did a bit of shopping. Next was Nelson to the info desk to see about camping in Glenelg NP.
We were directed to a specific campsite and were told that no one else would be staying there. It was a lovely drive down a slightly bumpy road, and we saw lots of wallabies!





When we got there, there was a vehicle and a girl siting on one of the picnic tables with her pack and she looked like she was waiting for something. We found out her name was Saki (sp?) and she was originally from the Netherlands, but has been living the past 5 years in Melbourne. She was doing the Great Southwest Walk, which starts from Portland and goes to Nelson and back. She'd done the Portland to Nelson bit (or at least was almost to Nelson) and was thinking she was going to give the second half a miss. She had been sitting waiting to see if the people who owned the car would come back so she could get a ride because she was out of water and Nelson was a good 10 k at least away. They never showed up, but when we arrived she decided to stay there the night since now she could get a good night's rest (she was a bit on edge camping by herself, worried about the people mainly, there had been a creepy guy there earlier offering her a ride). We had found out that there was a fruit and veg quarantine on the S.A. boarder, and we had just gone shopping, so we decided to cook up all of our potatoes and onions, etc. and package them up (cooked is ok, just not raw), so we shared some mashed potatoes with her and some chocolate cake we bought. She was very happy to have something other than her instant meals. :P We also helped her out by taking some of the food she didn't want and that weighed her down as well as her rubbish. It was dry that night and we were able to make a fire! We also had to keep chasing the possums away from our food, and there were wallabies eating casually nearby; wonderful.
Saki left the next morning before we got up.

We used the rest of our apples in apple pancakes and I made some cinnamon apples and apple cider, which we packaged up, and we were set. When we crossed the boarder all we needed to do was dump some carrots. We first went to Mount Gambier and had lovely weather walking around some crater lakes they have their made lots of years ago by volcanic activity.






We then made it to Robe via beautiful country, and went to the info desk/library where we got some awesome info about the next few legs of our trip. I was able to sign up for internet to use at any public library in S.A. and we did a driving tour of Robe, seeing the old gaol and the obelisk. We drove the 5 or so minutes to our campsite, The Gums, and set up. We went for a twilight/in the dark walk along sand trail to the beach (about an hour return), and sat by the water looking up at the starts; it was amazing. When we got back we made a fire, and had a dry night!






This morning we got up and got back to Robe at 9 AM, just in time to get into the library for some internet time, and here we are!! Next is to the Coorong NP.