Super Amazing - South Australia
Yep I’m back, having wrestled the blog from Dennis and Von, and to assure folks I can still string a sentence together...sort of.
It’s been a while since I’ve put words together so forgive me if I ramble on….no change there then!
I’m currently sat in the small coastal town of Kingston S.E in South Australia ; S.E refers to it’s location on the S.E Coast of South Australia?! Population 1,648….somewhat swollen at this current moment due to it being the South Australian and Victorian ‘long weekend’.
The South Australian long weekend is due, in part, to the Adelaide Cup on Monday. This is a HORSE Race which stops the State and earns everyone a Public Holiday. I had to google why the Victorians are having a long weekend as it is not Melbourne Cup Day (their HORSE race) tomorrow. Apparently in Victoria it is Labour Day, which it appears everyone else in Australia celebrates on the first weekend in September ?! Labour Day is to mark the creation of the 8 hour working day in Australia and the formation of the Labour Movement and Trade Unions.
So there you have it; that is why the RV Park we are in is full of Victorians who are now allowed out due to good Covid behaviour.
Covid Status here is good with South Australia being one of the states with very low numbers of cases 600+ and only 4 deaths. Probably due to very strict Border controls early doors. They do have the check-in app. Social distancing/hand washing notices are displayed everywhere but no obvious mask wearing and, to be honest, you would not necessarily realise you were in the middle of a world pandemic !
Each State has their own policies and guidelines and their own Apps so it has taken us a few days to work it all out, including how we checked out of places until we realised they don’t here! NSW, for example, has you checking in and out to establish a smaller timeline incase of further outbreaks. That said it was also very easy to forget to do even that…
Some facts and figures about South Australia for those who like facts and figures. It is the southern central state of Australia. It is 983,482 square km’s (that’s 379,725 square miles) which is the equivalent of France and Germany together or the province of Ontario.
It has a total population of just 1.769 million and 1.336 of those live in Adelaide with the next biggest rural city being Mount Gambier with a populace of just 25,199.
A large portion of the State, it is fair to say, is Desert and the rest seems to be given up to Vineyards !! Haha….hic !
South Australia prides itself on being one of the non-penal colony settlement areas and immigrants were English, Scottish and Irish, together with German farmers and artisans and Lutherans fleeing persecution in Europe. The German farmers initially made their homes in what is now the Adelaide Hills and the Barossa Valley and this became the start of a huge wine industry.
Given the uncertainties of travel, the plan is to lap South Australia in a similar fashion to the lap of Queensland, and then decide on the future sojourn.
We had perused the map of South Australia a while back and had spotted BORDERtown ! So yes it was a list item on the agenda ; mainly for our amusement but Dennis had a great time…honest!
Poor Dennis…
Despite our fickleness in choosing to travel to Bordertown, we did find it a nice little town and very RV friendly with a donation campground right on the edge of a man made lake. The lake was formed from the diggings when creating the by-pass, it had left a large hole so they filled it with water and put in a pathway around it with planting, benches and picnic area. Also putting in fish for recreational use too. We almost had the place to ourselves and managed on the second night to secure a lake view with a great sunrise.
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| (mm..doesn't look like much to fish!) |
From there straight in to the Penola & Coonawarra Wine Region. This region is famous for being the residence of Australia's first Saint, Mary MacKillop and for its Cabernet Sauvignon wine. The rich soil on top of limestone beds produces some of the best ‘Cab Sav’ in the country.
So it was rude not to…..a tasting at Rymill Winery and purchase of a Shiraz and a Gewurtztraminer showing that not all in the Coonawarra is CabSav ! I think my ‘Rymanian’ Fine Wine Fund might not last South Australia !
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| And a very nice drop too.... |
The region we have travelled through, and are now on the edge of, is known as the Limestone Coast….as it’s a Coast with many limestone features. Got to love the simple naming here.
The largest inland city of this region is Mount Gambier and in the past had been subject to much volcanic activity. This produced a number of differing types of volcano ; above and below the water table. This meant some craters have water and some do not. We visited the two variations, the 75 metre deep Blue Lake which does have the most incredible BLUE Water…there’s that naming thing again. To use the the indigenous name, it is known as Warwar - place of the crows so maybe that's where the obvious naming comes from after all as there were a number of crows around the Lake !?
The Blue apparently only appears between November and March and is something to do with the limestone, calcite crystals and the heat of the water at that time, we were very lucky to be travelling now. It was quite mesmerising so we walked around it which was a 3.6km footpath with lookout platforms along its route with 101 solar lamp posts ( I counted…and they were numbered!).
This was not the only water filled crater/sinkhole ; there is Little Blue Lake which you can swim in….and Von did! What a trooper as it was not a particularly warm day either but she assures me it was lovely and I was happy to take her word for it.
There are a couple of other sinkholes that you can dive in but given neither of us has any form of diving qualification decided to give those a miss. ** correction apparently Von is PADI qualified….but I am not!
The dry versions of the sinkholes were equally as fascinating. The much photographed one is the Umpherston sinkhole which astonishingly is FREE. Can’t help feeling that in the UK it would’ve had a turnstile, ticket booth and a paid car park to boot. Anyway back to the sinkhole ; it is the remnant of a late 19th century garden belonging to James Umpherston. His house was demolished in 1964 but the garden has been kept and preserved in accordance with Mr Umpherston’s wishes to provide a space for the public. It, like the Blue Lake, produced many ooo’s and ahhh’s from us and not so much Dennis as he had to stay in the van. There was a smaller version of the garden crater in the town centre which we pacified him with.
Mount Gambier also does have a Mount with a monument at the top so we decided on cardio training despite Von trying to convince me that we could drive most of the way….mm maybe I should’ve heard ‘MOST’. We were rewarded with a great view though and a nice chat to a chap who was removing weeds from the crevices of the rock on the top. Can’t help think he had a thankless task as by the time he finishes all the way round the weeds have re-appeared. Some mindfulness right there….
I should have noted that maybe Von was on a fitness drive due to the preponderance of yummy cake back in Kangaroo Valley. Mount Schank was our next days climb ; 1038 steps which I didn’t count and am happy to believe on the noticeboard. Mt.Schank is a dormant volcano which rises 100m out of the relatively flat plains on the way to the coast. It was named after Admiral Schank the designer of the ship HMS Lady Nelson. James Grant sighted this volcano from said ship in 1800. Another amazing view from the top was had whilst my lungs recovered…..and Dennis got to do it too!
We are finding so far that South Australia is very dog friendly and the areas where they are not allowed actually do seem sensible.
From there we hit the coast of the Limestone Coast and given it is not that far from the Victorian Border it has many similarities in the rock formations to the Great Ocean Road. The Limestone always means great light in both sea and rock which make for great photos. I have recently had to replace my phone so am marvelling at the new camera within the phone!…..little things.
The coastal towns along this stretch and to where we are presently are all great in their own right and essentially a mix of farming and fishing villages. We hopped along in slow time to explore them all. The main town of Robe is clearly the most popular with second home owners and folk with money, and the shops and cafes reflected that. Interestingly a few people had said you must go to Robe and yes it is a lovely town; but sadly the prices of the campgrounds there certainly reflect how affluent it now thinks it is.
That said it does have two breweries….fickle much?
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| Sadly the iconic obelisk that appears in all the Robe tourist promotions is out of bounds due to coastal erosion ! |
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| ..So we had to do Beer instead... |
The other towns/villages of Port Macdonnell, Carpenter Rocks, Beachport and here at Kingston are most definitely our preferences. Port Macdonnell boasts being the Lobster Capital of the south coast despite Larry the BIG Lobster being in Kingston. So share the love we did, with a half lobster, at a princely treat of $35 ….mind you we have no concept of whether that was expensive or not given we don’t often dine on lobster!! Port Macdonnell also had the best FREE 24hr stopover spot we’ve encountered so far with million dollar views and all to ourself that night.
Although the Kingston RV Park where we are currently also will take some beating at $10 for 3 nights and also a sea/jetty view.
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| Port Macdonnell 24hr Freestay...Dennis was thrilled! |
This coastline has some stunning rock formations, shells, seaweed, lighthouses, and almost white sandy beaches, and nothing that can kill you unless you count the crumbling cliff edges.
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| Beachport Jetty |
I mentioned jetty earlier and Beachport also has a BIG thing which is it’s jetty at 773metres. Allegedly the second longest in South Australia….I must google the first and see where it is. Mm it also had March flies or as they like to call them in the UK, Horse flies which decided Von was very tasty! This docked a point off Beachport which was doing very well in our chart of favourite small towns! Beachport also has a small inland lake called Siloam which is the closest you can get to the Dead Sea in that it has 7 times the salt concentration of the sea in it. It was a bit of a chilly day so we wimped out as it looked like a million seagulls had used it as their toilet.
This next little diversion between Beachport and Robe was one of those surprise finds which we like. Woakwine cutting had a brown tourist sign so it was rude not to. It is basically a V shaped cutting out of the rock and a small viewing platform to look at it. Why you ask is that so fascinating and had we been drinking? Well it was the feat of one man, Mr McCourt, and his mate, Mr McIntyre, who dug out 276,000 cubic metres of material to drain a swamp on his property. It took him 3 years and, at it’s deepest, it was 34 metres and this stretched for a Kilometre in length !!! Extraordinary and all done with fairly basic tractor and farm drain cutting equipment ! There's a little gem for you.
Which brings me back to the beginning and I’m now indoors as it has started to get windy and cool. Kingston SE is a great little town and whoever is in charge of marketing needs applauding. Clever use of signage, history walking trails, historic buildings, great off leash facilities for dogs, another jetty and great facilities for RV’s.
Friendly ; we’ve had the same local old boy stop and chat twice now and recommend things to us, and we will be trying the fish and chip shop this evening. It has a lighthouse which was originally 8km out at sea on a reef but was replaced by a more modern one. So they dismantled it and rebuilt it as a tourist attraction. Tonight, due to the long weekend, it is going to be lit so we are quite excited about walking along to that!
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| Hot off the press..... |
And one final boast for Kinston is they are allegedly the first town in South Australia to have an augmented reality mural….oh yes! No silo art or bog standard mural here. Brilliant once we had figured out how to do it.
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| The actual mural |
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| The 'augmented reality' mural - the bird was flying, the lighthouse beams were rotating, the squid and fish were swimming and there was the sound of the ocean and children laughing too! |
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