David and Enid's Travels

Devonport, Tasmania

We are in Devonport, Tasmania tonight.  We were up early this morning to make the trip to the ferry dock.  We got away with a large group of motorhomes and caravans all leaving the park at 6 am.  I unfortunately didn’t make the correct turn to get onto the freeway, and we had to drive about five extra kilometers to get back to the right spot and onto the proper road.  I will blame it on the early morning darkness, so that I could not see the sign for the Western Ring Road I was looking for (there was no such sign actually, and I didn’t realize that we had to go on the M1 freeway).  However it all worked out well and we got to the ferry on time and without mishap.

When we arrived they inspect you for propane cylinders and also ask if you have fruits and vegetables.  They don’t ask you to surrender the food at this point, but tell you that you can only eat it on the boat.  The security guard also told me that I needed to ask for an aquatic authorization certificate since we are carrying our snorkelling gear.  However when I asked at the purser’s desk on the ferry, they said that they had no idea who was telling people this (I was not the first to inquire) as there is no such thing.

The trip across was very good and uneventful.  The sea was not too rough, one to two metre swells, so that the ship rolled a bit, but never enough to be uncomfortable.  On arrival in Tasmania we didn’t have to wait too long to get through quarantine.  We got to the caravan park a bit before 7 pm.  The office was closed, and they had  left us our site number in a box by the gate, so we will have to check in with the clerk tomorrow.

Melbourne Central Business District across the Yarra River

Melbourne has a very good public transit system.  At least what we experienced of it today was excellent.  We took a bus from here to the central buisness district and wharf area which only cost $6.90 each for an all day pass.  In the downtown area itself there is a tourist shuttle bus with commentary that is free, and a loop tram that goes around the central area, also free.

We took the bus this morning, and spent the day doing some city sightseeing.  We first stopped in the Southbank area at the Arts Centre.  Here there was an exhibit called “Rock Girls” which displayed memorabilia about some of Australia’s popular female musicians.  We also stopped at the “Makers market” to view some of the displayed arts and crafts there.  Next we went across the street to the Queen Victoria Gardens.  There are not too many flowers there as the roses are now mostly finished.  We ate our lunch there, and just as we finished it sprinkled rain, but not for long.

We were going to take the tourist shuttle bus, but it was so crowded that instead we spent about an hour in the National Gallery of Victoria.  We toured through one floor quickly.  Enid found the display of ceramics particularly interesting.  They have a large collection of Minton, Lalique, Worcester, and other manufacturers.  As well there was a good collection of silver and silverplate.

We then did take the tourist shuttle trip.  If we’d have known they had a big Chinatown parade today (as it’s Chinese New Year) we’d have got off at Chinatown; however, we didn’t find that out until we got back and watched the news tonight.  Instead we got off at the very large Victoria market.  There are a very large number of stalls there selling everything from expensive jewellery to really cheap tee shirts and jewellery knockoffs.  We only covered perhaps a third of the market, and didn’t get to the vegetable part at all before we had to get back on the bus.

There was the Melbourne Boat and Leisure show on at Docklands.  We didn’t know that when we went, or we’d have taken a couple of extra million dollars out of the ATM to buy a yacht or two!  They did have several very expensive yachts and other sailboats there, as well as smaller boats and sea-doos.

We took the free tram service back to the information booth to see if we could get a better city map for our route to the ferry terminal tomorrow.  Since it is right downtown we want to make sure we know how to get there as it will be Monday morning and lots of traffic.  They didn’t have a good map, but did photocopy some from a book and pasted them together for us.  After that we walked back to Queen street and caught the regular bus back to our caravan park.

Tonight after supper the park manager knocked on our door and wondered why we had booked twice for tonight.  I told them when we registered yesterday that we had two separate reservations, but apparently someone forgot to cancel one from their computer.  They were wondering how they would have two different David Dice’s registered today.  I did ask what the best way to get to the ferry was, and the manager told me that they had a map printed in the office for that purpose.  It’s a different route than the one the information centre gave us, and probably easier as it involves mostly the freeway, so is the route we’ll be taking tomorrow.

It appears that we cannot get away from the wet weather for long.  The Melbourne area was hit by heavy rain, torrential downpours dumping over 100 mm of rain in many spots in just over an hour.  It was the remnants from Cyclone Anthony which moved south through the middle part of the country and came through here last night.  Many of the roads were closed including the freeway from Geelong (where we were last night) to Melbourne.  In our blissful ignorance, not having listened to the news this morning, we set off not knowing there was a problem.

We awoke early to come into Melbourne this morning to get our awning and windscreen repaired.  We didn’t get too far out of the city when the M10 highway was slowed to only one lane of traffic.  We inched along for several minutes until we could see the reason was the road was flooded.  We drove through water running over the road, though not nearly as deep as we did in Queensland.  Along the way we saw several cars sitting off the edge of the road.  With one it was obvious why.  It was right in the middle of the road at the on-ramp sitting in about 50 cm of water.  I imagine it had stalled there.  Shortly after that we came to a sign that said “Freeway Closed” so we followed the majority of the cars over the off-ramp, and back onto the highway on the other side, as there really didn’t seem to be anything much wrong with the road.  Not far up the freeway though the water was again over the road, but again not too deep, though it took a long time to inch along the highway until we got through it.

We then drove into the northern part of Melbourne to get our awning repaired.  Enid did a great job of navigating using our less than perfect map (we don’t have one with enough details of that area) and our notes from Google Earth we prepared last night.  We really need an Iphone!  When we got to the awning factory it appeared to be closed.  I knocked on the door, and was about to leave and get on the phone when Enid called and said that someone had opened the door.  We were able to get our parts and fixed the awning so that is working again.

After that we drove to the windscreen repair shop.  Since we arrived there early we waited in our motorhome until after we’d eaten lunch and then they fixed the front window.  It took a couple of hours, and we waited in their waiting room.  While there a family came in.  The woman was the most annoying person I’ve met in a long time, and her kids didn’t fall far from the tree.  She sat with her sleeve over her nose, complaining about the odor of the adhesives used, saying “I’m going to throw up, the smell is so awful in here”, while she proceeded to stuff herself and the  children with food, and they turned up the volume on the TV (while Enid and I tried to read).  However, we did get a nice new windscreen out of the deal, and so now we’ll just have to wait and hope that it was installed correctly and doesn’t leak.

We had a bit of trouble finding this caravan park, again as our map isn’t very good, but we made it here with only one short wrong turn.  The grounds are damp, but nowhere like the caravan park that was on tonight’s news.  About 10 km from here the park was flooded and the campers had to leave at about midnight.  A large tree fell on one tent of three women from England.  One is seriously injured, and they interviewed the other two (one of whom has a broken collarbone).  Eucalyptus trees are very big and the branches would be very heavy if they fell on you.  Fortunately we’ve had no problems like that.

I was brushing my teeth tonight when I saw a gray-haired woman approaching our door with a rolled up paper in her hand.  I thought she was coming to tell us something, but she just kept on coming through the door.  Then she looked up, saw me, and shouted in shock “Mama mia!”.  She retreated to her own motorhome which is right next to ours talking to herself in Italian the whole way.  I never said anything as my mouth was open wide to floss my teeth!  I’ve no idea what she said as she left, but the whole incident was very funny.

Surf coast near Eastern View, Great Ocean Road

Today we completed our trip on the Great Ocean Road.  The terrain to the east of Princetown is quite different, as the coast is much less rugged and rocky, and there are many more surf beaches.  The road itself though is narrow, twists and climbs over the hills along the shoreline, so travel was slow.  It was rare to get much above 40 kph as you would have to slow down every two or three hundred metres for another hairpin bend.  At several spots the roadway has collapsed, so they have a traffic signal and the road is one lane wide.  Several times we met vehicles that were well over the white line, so that was a bit scary when our lane was barely big enough for our motorhome.

We stopped at Marengo beach which is just west of the town of Apollo Bay.  We thought about going snorkeling, but it wasn’t really warm (the day was mostly high broken clouds) and was quite windy.  Because of the wind the water was quite choppy, so we decided not to snorkel.

Coast near Apollo Bay, Great Ocean Road

Instead we stopped on the east side of the town at a turnoff and walked along the beach.  It was quite flat and rocky.  As we walked to the beach we saw a park warden with two japanese men and their fishing rods, and he was escorting them from the beach.  A caucasian  woman was with them, and we heard her state her name.  I assumed that she was a tour guide with the men.  It was obvious that they were in some trouble, as there was a sign saying “No collecting” of any living specimens above the two metre depth mark.  We went down and walked along the beach for about a kilometre.  I got my feet wet when taking a picture as I didn’t see a breaking wave.

We walked back to our motorhome to eat.  When we got there the male park warden was talking to four men.  He had a clipboard in his hand and gave it to the woman.  She wrote on the board.  Up to this point I thought she was with the fishermen, but then the warden and she got into the four wheel drive vehicle, and she drove away.  As she got in I could see that she had handcuffs  on her belt, so I’m guessing she was probably a police officer, though she wasn’t in uniform at all, unlike the park warden.  In any case they had about a two litre bag of confiscated abalone with them as they got in.  I saw them stop farther down the road and the warden got out and walked down to the beach (I imagine he put the shellfish back into the water).  Then they parked up on the side of the hill on a narrow dirt road where they could see a long way down the beach in both directions.  They were still there when we left.  The fishermen were very polite and defferential while the officers were there, but when the officials left they threw their shoes down violently onto the ground in disgust, and then drove away.

We drove on to Geelong which is about 70 kilometres from Melbourne city.  We stopped at a caravan park here, defrosted our refrigerator, and planned our route into the city tomorrow so that we can get our awning repaired, and our windscreen replaced.  We stopped to buy groceries, and when we got out of the store it was pouring rain.  It didn’t last too long, but it rained heavily again as we were buying diesel fuel, and then rained again after supper.  While it rained it was heavy rain and some lightning.  It’s been quite a while since we were in rain.  The weather forecast for Northern Victoria, the part we ran away from by going to the South Australian desert and Eyre peninsula is once again under flood watch tonight.

The 12 Apostles, Great Ocean Road

Today saw a first for us on our trip to Australia – tourists.  Lots and lots of tourists, mostly Asian and European.  They were at every viewpoint at which we stopped this afternoon, and along the way we met many, many tour buses.  I guess that this really is a very popular part of Victoria.

The day started with a stop at the Crags, just before we got to Port Fairy.  This was our first view of the spectacular coast today.  At Port Fairy itself we walked around Griffith Island.  There is a large colony of “Muttonbirds”, short tailed shearwaters, that live here.  They fly out to sea by day and back at dusk, so we didn’t see any.  Their chicks are in underground burrows, up to two metres deep.  We did see some small black footed swamp wallabies.

Enid trying on hats Flagstaff Hill village at Warnambool

At lunch we stopped at Warrnambool to visit the Flagstaff Hill tourist village and museum.  This is a restoration of a mid 1800’s sailing town.  We very much enjoyed the artefacts in the museum (there are many shipwrecks along the rugged south coast of Australia, so many that it has the nickname “The Shipwreck Coast”) and the restored buildings.  A couple of them were staffed by volunteers in period costume.  The best one was the milliners where Enid got to visit with the seamstress who had made several of the hats on display, and try on some of the bonnets.  We spent about three hours on the site, and it reminded us very much of when our boys were young and we took them to the Fortress of Louisbourg, and Upper Canada Village.

As we left Warrnambool we were looking for the Allansford Cheese and Butter Factory.  I saw a sign that pointed into the town, so we drove that way, but couldn’t find any place.  When we got back on the Great Ocean Road, there it was, so it isn’t in Allansford at all, but just to the east of the town.  We did go in and tasted their cheese, most of which are spiced cheeses.  We bought some cheddar and a little bit of herb cheese (frankly I’m not very impressed with Australian cheese as North American cheddar is much more flavorful).

It was after that we began to meet tourists.  We stopped at many of the viewpoints after Warrnambool: the Bay of Islands and the Bay of Martyrs,  London Bridge, the Arch, the Loch Ard Gorge, and finally the Twelve Apostles.  Each of them is spectacular in its own way, though the Twelve Apostles is no better that the others, despite being the icon of the Great Ocean Road.  It is however the most developed and where we saw the most tourists.  Even though it was late in the day there were still several busses of Asian tourists around photographing each other in front of every possible viewpoint, as they seem to like to do.

We stopped for the night at the Princetown Camping Reserve.  It is a good place to park for the night, has power and showers, all for the reasonable price of $20.  Tonight there was a cricket team here practicing, as there is a cricket oval here as well as the campground.  It was fun to see many kangaroos out at dusk, and several of them were boxing, something we haven’t seen before.

Port MacDonnell coast at evening, Camel Rock

The fairy penquins turned out to be a bust, or as Enid said, “they really are fairies, they’re invisible.”  We waited until it was nearly dark and saw nothing.  It was very cold and windy out on the point, but we did get some nice pictures of the rocks.  Some of them have been named for their eroded shapes, and “Camel Rock” is probably the most impressive, though the other shapes were also identifiable.

Blue Lake, Mt. Gambier

This morning was cool, clear and sunny as we drove to Mt. Gambier.  We stopped there to see the Blue Lake, and walked about 1.5 km on a short loop into the Leg of Mutton Crater which historically was used as an experimental station to grow trees, specifically pine trees imported from North America.  The crater wasn’t too impressive since it was just a small grassy  clearing; though it was a nice walk, there really isn’t much to see there.  The deep turqouise blue colour of Blue Lake though is a very spectacular .  The lake is a fairly recent volcanic crater (about 4000 to 5000 years old) which has been filled with ground water that percolates in from the surrounding limestone aquifer.

After leaving the volcano crater area we tried to get diesel.  There was one service station with a good price, but it had a roof that was too low for us to get under.  We drove out onto the highway and passed a Shell station, but there was a semi truck filling up with diesel, and I didn’t want to have to wait for him to finish.  We drove back toward town where we’d seen another service station off to the side of the road, but when we got there it too had a roof too low to get under.  So we turned back and went back to the Shell.  I’m glad I didn’t have to pay his bill as it was $770.  Our fuel costs (which are averaging out to about $1.31 per litre over the entire trip – but going up now) are plenty high enough!

We ate lunch at a small town, Dartmoor.  Driving to the town we passed through many planted forests of pine trees (I assume of varieties imported and tested at Mt. Gambier).  Forestry is one of the main industries here.  It is interesting to see the forests, all of the trees in straight rows, and all the same size.  Sometimes the trees were quite large, 15 to 20 metres tall, and sometimes they were just seedlings, so must have been recently planted.  In the town itself they had a number of wood carvings made from some large trees.  The town also had the cleanest public washrooms, and shower, that I’ve ever seen.

We stopped in at Portland to get information from the visitor centre.  It is right on the harbour, so you  have to drive nearly all the way into the town centre to get to it.  From there we drove the few kilometres to this free camping area.  It is in a forest reserve, and is very nice under tall native eucalyptus trees.  There is an old remnant of a sawmill pit here so that is how it got it’s name.  There were only a few people here when we arrived, though more have come since then.  Enid visited for quite a while with a couple from Western Australia who are in a Winnebago Birdsville motorhome.  She took them on a quick tour of ours as well, and Enid is happy that ours is much roomier internally, though it physically is almost the same size.  Having the bed over the cab as we do gives us a lot more room.

South Australia Rock Lobster

It was a cloudy morning and very windy.  Now at 4 pm the sky has mostly cleared, the wind is dying down, and it looks like it won’t be a bad evening.

We drove through the town of Robe and to the scenic tourist drive.  It goes by the lighthouse and to some very pretty views out over the rocky part of the coast.  We stopped several times to take photographs.  Enid put on her longsleeved shirt as it was so cool.  After that we got groceries in the town’s supermarket.  Since they don’t provide shopping bags in South Australia (it’s illegal), we find it rather annoying as we always forget to take in our one bag we bought.   Enid commented to the clerk that it doesn’t make much sense, as we ended up having to buy plastic bags for garbage (and they’re bigger than the grocery bags so even more wasteful and polluting).  The clerk just scowled.  I suspect she’s heard the complaint a lot.

We drove to Beachport which is another small town that has developed a tourist drive.  The town is obviously a tourist centre, as there are many large houses built along the coastal view, and more under construction.  We met a man who was scuba diving, and talked to him at one of the viewpoints.  He had caught some rock lobster and abalone.  He offered us the abalone, but we really don’t know how to cook it (and he said it was difficult to do) so we declined.  We ate lunch at the surf beach.  There was a wicked wind coming off the ocean and as we started to eat it began to rain.

We drove through misty rain for the next hour or so.  It was still raining as we went through Mt. Gambier, and we questioned whether we should drive out to the coast or stay.  As it looked as if the clounds might be breaking a bit to the south we decided to come here to Port MacDonnell.  It looks like the right decision as it is now clearing and will be a nice evening.  We hope to be able to see the Fairy Penquin colony here tonight.

The beach at 42 mile crossing

It was a very hot morning.  After showering in the none-too-clean showers at the Gemini Downs campsite, we drove to 42 mile crossing.  This is a rough dirt road about 3 km in from the highway.  At this point a four wheel drive track and a walking trail start to the beach.  We took the walking trail on the way in, and I carried the video camera and tripod, as well as a backpack with our swimsuits and towels.  It was heavy walking as the trail was quite a lot of soft sand, and it also wasn’t very wide so the coarse grass scratched our legs.

When we got to the ocean we decided there was no way we were going swimming.  The surf wasn’t particularly high, but it was strong and the waves were coming in at a high frequency.  There was a lot of sand churned up by the waves.  The beach also has a large number of tiny snail shells littering it.  They are embedded in the sand and where the dunes have broken down the snail shells are exposed.

I climbed back up on the dunes and video taped the surf.  As I was about to leave I turned back inland and saw a large two metre long snake slithering up the dune.  I filmed it as it went up to the top of the sand and then crossed over to the other side of the dune.

We walked back along the four wheel drive track to the beach.  At first it was easier walking, but it soon became very soft sand so, while it was wide compared to the walking trail so no scratchy grass, it was very hard walking in the heat of the morning.  It must have been close to 40 degrees C by the time we finished.  It had been cooler near the water with the breeze off the ocean, but it was quite hot as we ate our lunch.

We drove to the small town of Robe, and got here in early afternoon.  The Big 4 campground is nice and is right across the road from a park that leads to the beach.  It wouldn’t be more than 100 metres to the sand of the beach.  However, it is another 100 metres out to the water, and then a fifty metre walk into the water before it gets deep enough to swim.  The water was also quite cool, and so it felt good.  By now there was a large cloud system moving in, and it started to sprinkle rain.  With the change in weather it became a lot cooler.  We went back to our motorhome and read outside for a while.  Though it occasionally spit rain it never rained hard enough to get the books wet.  When it stopped raining we went back to the beach, swam again, then walked a couple of kilmetres north east along the beach.  There were a lot of vehicles parked on the sand of the beach, and many families in the water, some on kayaks or canoes, and some paddling surfboards.

The Big Gallah, Wimba, South Australia

Despite its name, there has probably never been any snow here.  We are in a very small caravan park, really just a town campsite with a couple of places to park, though it does have power, water, toilets and showers, and is really cheap at $15 for the night.  We spoke to the attendant when he drove by to register us, and I asked him where the name came from.  He said the first resident of the town’s name was “Snow”.  He also told me a story of a Greek buisnessman who was going to buy a business in the town, but then changed his mind when he thought it would be snowing here.

Well, it’s not snowing.  The temperature today was over 38 °C, one of the hottest days on which we’ve travelled.  The news tonight was about the current heat wave, and the top temperature today was at Coober Pedy at 48.2 °C.  We’re very glad we aren’t up there today!

We didn’t do any tourist things today, other than stop for a brief break at a store selling jewellery in Wimba, with this huge sculpture of a gallah cockatoo.  The sign said “Halfway across Australia” and that would be about right.  As in Canada, huge sculptures representing something local are used to try and lure in the tourists.  It did get us to stop, and though we never bought any jewellery, we did buy a sweet roll iced with rasberry and cream icing.  That’s the first time we’ve bought anything like that here, and it made for a nice morning snack.  For the rest of the day we just drove to get to the area where we’re stopped tonight, just north of Adelaide.