As per my post day 1 was great UNFORTUNATELY the night of Day 1 was HORRIBLE! We went to bed with clear skies and not a breath of wind but at 3:00am a storm hit with 100km/h winds. The awning was still out and I lay there scared that any moment the awning would tear and go flying off. At 6:00 Tanya and I got up and quickly brought the awning in... that was just the start of our drought breaking tour! Thankfully we were not in a tent like our friend Gillian, she had been up since 3 trying to make sure her tent didn't fly away and when she finally did get back to bed she had to hold onto the center pole! And the worst was yet to come when she pulled one of her tents down she found she had pierced a water pipe with one of her pegs! We gave her a hand to get everything cleaned up while the rain continued to come and go all morning.
Day three made us all feel as if it was the REAL beginning of the round Australia trip, we said goodbye to Kerry, Gillian and all the kids and set off for Robe, we had a wonderful morning tea after about an hour or so which was exactly what we had been expecting.
The trip appeared to be starting to have a them of head winds and cloudy skies, after what seemed like hours we decided that we may cut the day short and go to Naracoorte to have a look at the caves. It was sensational when we did get to the caravan park at Naracoorte there was another wind up caravan who arrived at the same time, we were setup in about 20 mins and he had still only wound up the top!
The only issue we faced was we discovered that our SA Parks pass didn't cover the $13 per head charge for the caravan park! The second theme for the trip is AVERAGES, average cost per day, average km's per day, average speed and probably average beers per day. This then brings me to the final theme for the trip and that is that our parents are always right! As my dad told me before I left (and I said I wouldn't!) I finally put a piece of fishing line to hold my mirror in place today following it being blown in by trucks going the other way for the fourth time!
We headed off to the Naracoorte Caves and raised the average cost per day by paying to do a tour, it turned out to be sensational! We went 17 meters underground and saw some amazing caves.
Day 4 and we were off to Robe, we discovered on the way that the voice on our GPS was called Karen so from that point on it was ask Karen when we needed to go somewhere, unfortunately when we put the coordinates in for the next stop Karen took us up some dirt road until i got out and onto the bike to work out where the heck we were going..... I found we had absolutely no way of getting through so we turned Karen off! Note to self National Parks and Karen don't mix!
The boys and I went to the surf and did some fishing, Nicholas caught the first fish of the trip, a small Salmon, followed by a couple of crabs!
Given we were originally only going to spend two days in Robe we were due to move on the next day but the location was great and the weather was due to get better so we decided to stay another day.
Day 5 and once again it rained over night, thankfully it had cleared by the morning so the boys and I went into town and did some fishing off the breakwater, we only managed to get a couple of Tommy Roughs. Back at camp and we decided to go for a ride which was a struggle in the sand. Once we did get off the sand and into the bush it was great, I was very impressed with Tanya who rocked out some single track action! We were planning to go and check out in town so I suggested that we ride in and see the sites, something that Tanya and the boys may have regretted saying yes to a little latter, we ended up riding about 15-20kms
Day 6 and we were on the road by 8:00 things were looking up no head wind but the rain was still coming and going.... it was a beautiful drive through the Coorong with the initial destination (from Karen) being Wellington via the ferry, once we actually got to Wellington it wasn't quite what we expected, we fueled up here and Tanya caused a blow out in the average cost per day when she paid $14 for a loaf of bread, apparently what happened was that she paid $136 for $122 for fuel and $4 for a loaf of bread, all of this she realised once we were 10 mins out the road and it wasn't worth going back for.
We pushed on to Victor Harbour which is beautiful and well worth the effort to get here, we setup quickly while the kids played on the jumping pillow (I think the two days in the national park were hard on them cause I could hear the screaming from 200 meters away!). We went for a cruise on our bikes to find the Information Office and find out what we should see while we are here, picked up some brochures and went for a bigger ride towards the bluff. The kids found some rock pools and lucky for us there was a great restaurant/cafe across the street so we had a coffee and the boys got to check out the pools (which eventually ended up and a stone fight and me taking a trip down ask them to stop!). I'm a bit disappointed that we are not going to be here a bit longer cause there are some great bike tracks around here but we need to keep moving. late in the day we went for a walk across the causeway and around Granite Island, we must have looked a site, we were all rugged up like we were off to the snow and people were coming the other way in their flimsy summer outfits, once we actually got to the other side of the island we were very thankful for our jackets and woollen beanies!
We are going to have a bit more of a look arround tomorrow and then head to Handorf for our big night out!
Stay tuned
