Wirrina Cove to Kangaroo Island 16^th December 2014

Wirrina Cove to Kangaroo Island

We took breakfast at Wirrina Cove and then a drive down to Cape Jervis to catch the ferry to Kangaroo Island.  On arrival at the Cape we could see the ferry in the distance heading to the port. The harbour is relatively small and the ferry has to turn through a right angle in its own length. Loading on the ferry is quite impressive since there is only one ramp. Thus not only do the majority of cars have to turn around on the ferry so that they are pointing forward to exit but the articulated lorries, and some with articulated secondary sections, have to reverse on to the ferry, all with an accuracy of about 6”.

Sealink Ferry

We picked up a few tips at the information centre when we landed and decided to head to Stokes Bay on the north of the island. The island is around 150km west to east and 50km at its widest point north to south. There are a few sealed roads but most are not.  Stokes Bay was quite rocky with off shore reefs but the adjacent bay was beautiful and accessed through a tunnel in the rocks. The wind was relatively strong and northerly onto the beach.

Passage entrance

Exit

The beach

After taking lunch at the beach, but in the car, we drove to Kingscote where were had booked a bungalow for a couple of nights.  On the way to Kingscote we stopped off at Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park, where some of the elusive Australian animals, we had so far not seen in the wild, were present including crocodiles and cassowarys.

Sheila finds a friend!

Green Tree Frog

The accommodation in Kingscote is one street back from the coast on the Western Cove but high enough such that we have a view of the coast.  

Kingscote Bungalow

After 5 weeks travelling I am glad to say that Sheila hasn’t forgotten how to cook!

Relaxation in Wirrina Cove 15^th December 2014

Today we decided to stay put at the Wirrina Cove Golf complex and play a round of golf. The course is reasonably good, with plenty of variation and quite a few bunkers. The clubs we hired were fine with a mix of graphite shafted driver and fairway woods and steel shafted irons.  The temperature was around 27C when we started around 10am but a breeze off the coast helped to keep us cool.

There were more kangaroos on the course than players and occasionally we would disturb one as we passed bushes where they were sheltering from the sun. 

Wirrina Cove golfers!

We played through three guys playing together but they were probably the only players anywhere near us. 

Sheila at Wirrina

The course is quite hilly and goes all the way down to within sight of the harbour. On the border of the golf course there is a complex of holiday apartments.

View of coast from number 13 tee (375m)

There were quite a few flies hovering over as we lined up for a shot. Sheila played one shot on a par 3 that fell short and into a stream. In her attempt to locate the ball she spotted a red-bellied black snake in the long grass so gave that ball a miss. (NB. Red-bellied black snakes are venom is capable of causing significant morbidity.)

Sheila decides not to probe further!

After golf we took a beer in the bar and crisps and then had a spot of lunch on our balcony looking out onto the course. 

Around 4pm we headed out across the course to explore the harbour, which had a reasonable number of boats moored up. 

Wirrina Cove Harbour

When we got back we went for a swim and Jacuzzi in the pool and then prepared for evening dinner – such a hard life!

Penola to Wirrina Cove 14^th December 2014

Our plans have changed so we can visit my Uncle in Victor Harbor later this week. We decided to get up relatively early and drive from Penola to Adelaide and then down to Wirrina Cove on the north west side of the Fleurieu Peninsula, where we have booked two nights, ahead of taking the ferry across to Kangaroo Island. We shall visit my uncle after we get back from Kangaroo Island and before flying out to Perth. The total journey today was over 500km, enough for one day, but starting at 8am made a difference as did the fact that it was a Sunday, although in some parts of Australia the traffic is always light.

Penola to Wirrina

The drive from Penola to Kingston SE, which is on the coast was across flat arable land and along straight roads where one was easily able to engage cruise control. The distance to Kingston was about 130km and we saw no more than a handful of cars, if that. Even Kingston wasn’t busy, although it was 9:30am on a Sunday morning!

Flat as a pancake!

From Kingston we drove along the coast to Tailem Bend, some 200km but again the traffic was light and the roads fairly straight. On the west side of the road, towards the coast, there are extensive inland lagoons that are exceedingly salty only being fed from the ocean at one point along the coast near Hindmarsh Island. One or two of the dried up white salt beds would make idea calibration targets for satellite imagery. This stretch of coastline is called the Coorong National Park and the road the Princes Highway. 

We stopped at Meningie for a quick rest and spotted a few pelicans and other birds on the in-land stretch of water. 

Great white egret

At Tailem Bend we drove on to a town called Murray Bridge and crossed the Murray River. The same river we had seen in Echuca, NSW and which starts in the Snowy Mountains back in Thredbo, some river!

We drove towards Adelaide but took a diversion into the Adelaide Hills and through Hahndorf. This town was established as a farming village in 1839 by Lutheran refugees from East Prussia and the town has tried to maintain the original German character of its settlers. We knew of the town and were keen to take a look but we were principally looking for a quiet spot for lunch. We decided to move on since there was an open air Christmas market in progress and it was busier than a Saturday in Sevenoaks High Street!

We arrived in Adelaide after a spot of lunch else where and undertook a fairly swift walk around the city centre, including the river and the botanical gardens, before heading south to Winnira Cove.  The botanical garden houses the national wine centre, where you can sample a wide range of wines from Australia. If we hadn't been driving further I would have stayed and sampled a few.

Wine Cellar

The land south out Adelaide, through the Fleurieu Peninsula, is fairly fertile with a series of rolling hills and some of the most attractive landscape we have seen in Australia for many days.  However, the roads are fairly bumpy and tested the cars suspension system.

We are staying the next two nights at the Wirrina Cove hotel and golf complex and to say it is not busy is an over exaggeration. However, we will get a quiet round of golf in the morning, which is always welcome.

We ate at the hotel and I had some local wines from the Allusion winery. The shiraz strikingly better than the Cabernet Sauvignon and well worth sampling. 

We watched a three-way boxing match after evening dinner as well as spotting a kangaroo guarding a golf bunker! Tomorrow’s game may be interesting! 

Three-way boxing

Penola/Millicent 13^th December 2014

The day started with breakfast on the decking with hardly a cloud in the sky and the expectation of high temperatures.

Sheila takes breakfast

We decided to split the day with a spot of site seeing in Millicent, which boasted a living history museum, covering the period of the settlers in the early 1800s through to the early 1900s. This included a collection of horse drawn vehicles, farm machinery, women’s clothing and a room on ship wrecks off the south coast. Outside was one of the blades from a wind turbine. 

Mike takes a shave!

Sheila (nee Holden) took a fancy to one of the street murals.

Real or imaginary?

On the way we had spotted a lookout point near Mount Burr, which we noted before we had time to stop so on the way back stopped to take a look. The lookout wasn’t well positioned being too close to the high trees of Mount Burr Forest.  However, the static display boards were quite informative about the forestry industry and how it had developed. One of the largest employers in the area is Kimberly Clarke, who Sheila recognised as the suppliers of paper products, such as paper towels (Kim wipes). They have had their disasters in the area with one fire devastating 16,000 hectares of forest.

Mount Burr Forrest Lookout

The choice of the trees was undertaken via trials back in the 1800s and the tree species pinus radiate was shown to not only be fast growing and well adapted to the climate but was also able to provide the appropriate products for pulp as well as for building materials. These trees are grown for 40 years before being felled. Forestry is a major industry in this area and the gross value of timber-based producds in South Australia (SA) is $1.3 billion. The annual harvest of SA would make a line of loaded log trucks parked end to end from Adelaide to Sydney!

In the afternoon we headed onto the Coonawarra wineries and sampled a number of wines, well Mike did, Sheila was the chauffeur! The history of some of these wineries was sometimes more interesting than the quality of the wines. The climate here is on average 16C and this might be too cool to generate the intensity found in the more northerly wineries of NSW.

Coonawarra's seasonal surfer

Our final sightseeing of the day was a walk down Petticoat Lane, Penola.  Here there are some original homes built in the 1850s and 1860s, with hessian sack lined walls, simple timber frames and roof tiles made from bark.

Port Fairy to Penola (Coonawarra) 12^th December 2014

Port Fairy to Penola

We headed west out of Port Fairy in the direction of Portland. Portland is the oldest European settlement in Victoria and the only deep sea port between Adelaide and Melbourne. It has a large fishing fleet but what is more evident are the ships loading up with what appears to be sand. There is also aluminium smelting works in the city. Generally the town looks quite smart considering its industrial nature.

Portland

We took morning café latte in Portland's Tea-Tree Gallery, which had numerous rooms with a wide range of painting styles from landscapes to a Dali look-a-like.

Tee-Tree Gallery 

Air Banana

Dali?

From Portland we went to Cape Bridgewater to see blowholes and a petrified forest.  No holes were blowing, although there were good examples of basalt columns on the cliffs but the “petrified forest" was impressive. 

Basalt formation on cliff top

Basalt close-up

The actual cause of the Petrified Forest is debated and two different theories exist.  

"Petrified Forest"

To get to the Cape one has to pass through Bridgewater with a stunning beach 4km long and budding surfers.

Bridgewater - surfers paradise

The area was very windy, probably a regular occurrence since there are 29 large wind turbines all part of the 58MW Cape Bridgewater wind farm. 

Wind turbines

A little further down the road we spotted a mob of kangaroos. In fact today we saw more roadside kills of kangaroos than we have seen before,

The Mob

The route from Portland to Nelson takes one through about 30km of cultivated forests with sections of varying ages. The forest was protected with wide fire breaks and large tractor type vehicles were ploughing the soil to maintain the fire breaks. Similar large forests were seen on the road north of Mount Gambier in the Penola Forest.

Forest cultivation & fire break

From Bridgewater we travelled onto Nelson,  a very small village on the coast. This hosted a large number of black swans in the estuary as well as a pelican.

Pelican

Black Swans

How do you train 6 race horses at once? You tie them to a pick-up truck and drive at constant speed around a gallop track. Is this just an Aussie technique? Only wish I had my camera handy. 

Penola is our resting place for the night and only a stone’s throw from Coonawarra, which is a well-known wine area. The plan was to visit the wineries after playing golf at the local golf club but it looks as though the club is hosting a tournament and being Saturday it will be quite busy. Also the forecast is for temperatures to get up to 31C so we will make other plans for tomorrow, although the wineries will stay.

A Day of Relaxation - Port Fairy 11^th December 2014

We started the day with a few international Skype calls to Cambridge, England and Oregon, USA and then took breakfast.  After breakfast we both answered and sent out our e-mails.

We headed out to Port Fairy’s golf club, a links course on the edge of the Southern Ocean.

Golf Captains?

The clubs we hired were probably the best we had obtained in Australia, both TaylorMade. 

Golf Paradise

The day started fairly overcast with a strong breeze off the coast but the sky soon cleared up and the contrast of the breaking waves against the blue sea looked awesome.

Mike hits out in Port Fairy

We finish around 4:30pm and headed back to Port Fairy to take a cursory looked around the port and Griffiths Island, which is occupied by Mutton birds. Since it was getting latish, and we had not had any lunch, we decided to take an early evening dinner at the Madagalli Restaurant and sample some of the Australian wines. We had tried to take a meal there the night before but it was full, which is always a good sign. This time we were the first in the restaurant.

We got back to the apartment and made some tea and for the first time since leaving Melbourne broke out the Christmas cake – many thanks Hazel, exceedingly good.

Apollo Bay to Port Fairy 10^th December 2014

Apollo Bay to Port Fairy

We started the day with a game of golf on the coastal 9-hole course at Apollo Bay. The clubs had to be hired from the sports shop and they only provided 6 clubs for the princely sum of $6, (Mike managed to get 2 putters as part of his deal). The cloudy morning soon brightened up and we didn’t need the additional apparel that we had taken on the round. Mike even dashed back to the car to pick up his sunglasses but should have also picked up his hat to keep the sun off. The club was holding a “Shot Gun” tournament at noon. This approach has all tees being occupied at the start so it required that we finish golf at noon, which we did by 11.58!

We made an attempt to seek out some waterfalls off the beaten track but ended up running out of time so decided to go more directly to Port Fairy. However, we stopped for lunch in a wooded clearing and spotted a kookaburra sitting in a tree, which then flew down closer into the grass.

Kookaburra

We completed the 241km of the Great Ocean Road and the landscape started to flatten out.  We eventually arrived at the site of the 9 Apostles on the coast, which was crowded out with Japanese tourists. 

Two of the Apostles

Further along the road there is one feature called the London Bridge, where the erosion of a rock, separated from the land, has left an impressive arch.  Along this coast line the sedimentary layers of the cliffs were very evident.

London Bridge

Port Fairy is a relatively small town mainly with single storey buildings and wide roads but with enough shops to service the locals and visitors. We were relatively late for Australia to find a restaurant, starting our search just after 7pm. We eventually decided on the L’Edera restaurant that was recommended on Google but the service was slow. However, the food was very good apart from the parsnips, which were as hard as nails in the centre and even though we sent the parsnips back three times they never succeeded.  After a few “words” they eventually gave us a small discount – not the best of experiences.