Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Day 3 - 19/07/05 Strathalbyn, South Australia.
It's really hard to get up in the cold. We meant to start early this morning, but didn't get up until 7.30. Because Portland is so far west of Melbourne, that's also around when the sun rises. Had a breakfast of ragi porridge, packed up the tent and started around 9.50 am. The road to Mount Gambier was literally paved with kangaroos. There were hundreds of road-kill that we came across. Many trucks pass this way and there seems to be a daily carnage at dawn and dusk when the animals are about. Never seen that many dead kangaroos before. But road kills aside, we have seen quite a bit of wild life on this trip so far. Whales at Warnambool, seals at Cape Bridgewater, a few kangaroos on that walk to the cape, gannets, and plenty of emus today. Most of the route to Mt Gambier had pine tree plantations in various stages of growth on either side.
At Mount Gambier we stopped briefly to take a peek at the Blue Lake, a lake in a volcanic crater just outside the town. We've seen it before and it looked the same dull blue-grey colour. Apparently in summer the waters turn a brilliant blue and then return to the unremarkable colour for the rest of the year. From Mount Gambier we headed to Naracoorte.
There were also plenty of vineyards, stretching as far as the eye could see. It wasn't quite a pleasant sight as the vines were all bare and gnarled. But the vastness of the vineyards was striking. This region is called the other red centre of Australia. The first is Uluru, or Ayer's rock, which is the world's largest monolithic rock and glows a fiery red. The Coonawarra region is called the red centre because it is famous for producing good red wines.
Naracoorte is a World Heritage listed site. There are about 26 caves in the National P
ark, which are formed in the limestone underground. The site has achieved world heritage listing because 24 of the caves have rich fossil deposits. These fossils include those of prehistoric creatures that populated the region and provide important information in understanding the evolution of Australian fauna. There are fossils of giant prehistoric kangaroos and wombats among others. We took a tour of one of the caves, Alexandrina cave, which has some beautiful stalactite and stalagmite formations. Everybody expected the cave to be cooler than the outside, but it was actually pleasantly warm. I believe its because the underground temperature in a place is fairly constant throughout the year, and whether the cave is warmer or cooler is then relative to the outside temperature. We also wandered through another cave, wet cave which
had enormous cavernous chambers. The ground in the area was quite flat and the entrance the caves were like holes in the ground. Some of the fossils were of animals which had fallen into the smaller of these holes (because they weren't so noticeable)and become trapped and died.
We'd originally planned to stop for the night in Naracoorte. But since there was nothing else there of interest we decided to continue. We decided to visit Victor Harbour on the Fleurieu peninsula south of Adelaide, before going on to Adelaide. It became dark while we were still driving. We had to cross the Murray at Wellington, where it enters the Alexandrina lake from which it then drains into the sea. There was a free ferry to cross the river. But it was dark and we couldn't see anything. From Wellington the road followed the shore of lake Alexandrina for a short distance, but we saw nothing in the darkness. We decided not to drive all the way to Victor Harbour, since we'd miss the scenery on the way and Night driving wasn't safe either. So we stopped for the night in Strathalbyn, along the way.
