Going Underground.

Friday 6th January 2017 - to Mount Gambier

We moved on again towards Mount Gambier which is a town inland north of Nelson, Victoria.  Please don't get confused like me by town names.  My first ever job was in Nelson, Lancashire and this place had no similarity.

Nelson, Victoria is a very small fishing and boating community....and I have a message for all shipping in the Nelson, Lancashire area, 'bog off, there's no water' (an old Mike Harding joke)!

Today the temperature was probably the highest we have had, up to 38 degrees, phew.  We drove inland through endless commercial pine forests, seeing lots of log wagons travelling in the opposite direction.  We had a picnic lunch in shade at the Mount Gambier Information Centre.  There was a scale model of Lady Nelson sail ship which was a ship that navigated the coastline around South Australia and Tasmania.

We have now left Victoria State and we are in South Australia State for the first time.  We saw signs prohibiting the transport of fruit and plants across the border and quarantine bins we available to dispose of foodstuffs.  I must confess we smuggled in two apples, a tomato and a quarter of a cucumber.  We felt so guilty we ate our tomato and apples with our lunch.  Also, without us knowing the clocks went back by half an hour when we crossed into South Australia....no signs for that ehh!

Due to the heat we decided to drive on to Naracoorte Caves, as we would be able to be cool in the caves.  It had been recommended to us by Cousin Jack and Jill and it is a World Heritage Site.

We had the tour of the Victoria Cave complex and the guide took us to the fossil cave which contained the bones of prehistoric marsupials.  He explained that animals fell down holes into the caves and couldn't get out, they probably died of starvation rather than by injuries caused by the fall.  The bones date back to at least 200,000 years ago.  The bones showed that there were kangaroos with larger heads (a bit like a large koala head), they stood tall and ate leaves and tree bark rather than the kangaroos of today that eat grass.  They think they may have looked like this!  Not a good look!  By 'Whatsapp' my daughter said it looked like my son,John, in the mornings but I refute the comment as John is much taller!

Also there were carnivorous marsupials who may have looked like this...

Not cute like koalas are they?  The guide described them as large meat eating wombats.

We drove back to Mount Gambier, through the Coonawarra wine growing area.  It was totally flat and unremarkable but the major wine makers were all present including Penfold and Lindemans.  We didn't stop.  We fancy an organised wine tour but probably in the Barossa Valley nearer Adelaide.  A wine tour isn't much good if one of us is driving!

We called at our accommodation, a B&B called Colhurst House.  It is very nice, another character location.

This is the communal lounge.

The room has lots of original features and has a modern walk-in glass shower and roll top bath.

We had an evening walk, ate at the Mount Gambier Hotel and went to see the Blue Lake.  It was a bit dark by the time we got there...

Nice sunset though.  It is in a volcanic crater.  There is another smaller crater in the middle of town where there were videos being projected onto the sides of buildings.  The videos were mainly historic showing people and places of importance to the area.  The show was quite cool.

It isn't shown too well on the photo but it gives you an idea.  There was a projection of different things on the opposite building too.