Mount Gambier visit

Sinkhole in centre of town

We took a day trip from Portland to Mount Gambier to visit some old friends and take in some of the Limestone Coast that runs from Tailem Bend in South Australia to Nelson in Victoria. We only visited the section from Portland to Mount Gambier but it was a great day out – great scenery and lunch and a guided tour of Mt Gambier with our friends Linda and Lindsey.

Blue Lake Crater - 80 meters deep!

First stop was the Princess Margaret Rose Caves at Nelson. We arrived at 9:45 ready for the 10:00 guided tour. Unfortunately the tour guide had developed a bleeding nose on the way to work (novel excuse that one!) and the 10:00 tour was cancelled. So after a quick walk round we departed the “bloody nose” caves and headed off to Mt Gambier.

Old friends catching up

Mount Gambier link here is a surprisingly big town (in fact a city) which is famous for its crater lakes and sinkhole gardens.

Valley Lake (used to be much bigger)

It would be good to visit the gardens in spring when all the flowers are in bloom but they are still impressive in early winter when we visited.

Wow!

Great day out and we will spend more time around her next time we caravan by.

Colac stop over

Think Linda was shaking a little in Burnley Tunnel

After escaping from Melbourne we headed south on the Princes Highway towards Portland.  We decided to stay two nights at Lake Colac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Colac  so we could take a day out to tour the area and take in some of the local attractions and scenery.

Nice boat ramp but no lake

The free camp at Lake Colac is right on the shore of the lake with water views, skiing and fishing – IF the lake had any water in it – unfortunately it was dry for the second time in 175 years!

No water - but nice

Still a nice spot with grass, flushing dunnies, town water available and a view over the dry lake bed towards the large country town of Colac.

On top of old smoky

Lake Colac and lots of other nearby lakes were created by volcanic activity and you can still see the remnants of inactive volcano’s and the lush red-soil farmland and dairy farms.

Triplet Falls

We drove up into the temperate rainforests of the Otway Ranges. With massive tree ferns, waterfalls and Australian beech forests – this is a beautiful spot. We did a short walk to Triplet Falls through the rainforest (surprisingly it was raining in the rainforest) and headed out to the Otway Flyway were the world’s longest treetop walk has been built.

Gloomy and green

Plan was to have some lunch and for me to do the walk while Linda relaxed in the café.  After finding out it was 600M walk to the start of the 600M treetop walk and my knee already giving me some grief from the waterfall walk I decided to put the walk off till “next time”.  Lucky I am not a horse – would have been put down by now!

Our Victorian Visits

As we travelled south towards Melbourne we had the opportunity to catch up with friends we had met travelling around Oz in our van and mates I had worked with for over 20 years.

Camp Blair Morwell

First stop was Steve and Carol's (and Roxy) place at Morwell just north of Melbourne.  We had met these guys last year camping at Gregory Downs in far north west QLD and then by coincidence/ plan at several other free camps as we travel around north QLD.

MKR - flattie chef

Over two nights of memorable dining – Steve’s famous seafood chowder and Kerry’s flathead fillets  we had a laugh, played ladder golf and let the girls beat us at a board game called Sequence (that’s our story and we’re sticking to it!).

a lunch of good looking guys!

Second stop was a quick lunch at Williamstown with some of the guy’s I had worked with for over 20 years. Some retired and some still working (someone has to pay the taxes!).  An hour wasn’t long enough but it was good to see the guys again and take a quick drive past the Williamstown Dockyard gates where I first visited as a young sailor in 1973 and many times after in my working life. Sad to hear that the Dockyard was likely to shut-down after serving the Navy since WW2 – so much history and current skills in jeopardy.  Hopefully they can find a project to keep it going.

Pre-dinner photo at E&J's

Next stop was Esther and Johns’s at Endeavor Hills near Dandenong. We had met John and Esther on our first trip around Oz in 2011-2012 up at Mataranka in the NT and had kept in contact ever sense. Despite Esther working and being very busy they found time to catch up, cook us a roast lamb dinner and take Linda out for a girls shopping outing to the Dandenong  Markets.

We head south towards Portland next week but are so pleased to have had the opportunity to catch up with new and old friends.  Hopefully we will see you “out there/or at our place” in WA - sometime in the future and it was great catching up!

Wallagaraugh River Retreat

Yep - uggies and beanies - its getting cold

A visit to Mallacoota Inlet was on my bucket list - so a stopover was mandatory as we travelled south into Victoria and the beautiful East Gipsland area. As it was the middle of the Victorian School Holidays we decided to camp at Wallagaraugh River Retreat Web site here which “strange as it may seem” is on the Wallagaraugh River which is one of two tannin coloured rivers flowing into Mallacoota Inlet.

Kerry out chasing bream

What a spot! – we camped on the bank overlooking the river just 30Mtrs from the boat ramp. With mullet jumping day and night, pelicans feeding all day this looked to be the Promised Land.

Nice bream on poppers!

Mallacoota is famous for big bream and flathead and the Wallagaraugh River delivered the goods. Lots of big golden bream on “walk the dog” poppers and big black flathead on both diving hard-bodies and plastics.

Happy flathead angler

Linda (AKA the Flathead Queen) was constantly pulling in flatties every midday fishing expedition and out fished me 3 to 1.

That's three!

Must have something to do with my expert guiding and lure selectionJ.

Mallacoota Wharf - wow!

The camp has no phone signal or internet so we gave the flatties and bream a day’s rest and drove the 65kms into Mallacoota township to do some shopping, stock up on fuel ,have lunch at the pub, do some sightseeing and catch-up on emails, facebook and missed calls.

Mallacoota Inlet looking back from entry

You can see why Mallacoota is so popular – huge expanses of protected inlet, sandy beaches and fish jumping on your hook!

After a week on the river - we leave with one more item on the bucket list “ticked off” and our freezer full of flathead fillets.

Milton Moments

Coming up towards Easter we were faced with the problem of finding somewhere to stay near the coast that wasn’t booked out and didn’t cost an arm and a leg. So we planned to arrive at Milton Showground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton,_New_South_Wales two days before Easter and stay till the mad Easter rush was over.

Milton Showground - busy but  nice and green

Turned out to be a good plan as we found a nice spot at the showground and great value at $20/night with power, water, hot showers, lovely green grassed areas and close to town and other tourist attractions (AKA fishing spots).

Milton on the south coast of NSW is nestled between the green inland mountains and the beaut surf beaches and estuaries of the coast.

Son Arron with his first "walk the dog" beam

It may be surprising to readers of this blog that we soon located a quiet little river upstream from the pristine Lake Conjola where we could launch the tinny and refresh our bream lure fishing techniques. First expedition out and Linda and I caught enough bream for dinner and some left over to give to our caravan neighbor at the showgrounds. We were lucky to have our two sons drive down for Wollongong to stay a night each with us at Milton.

There is a heaven!!

Took them both out in the tinny to provide fatherly guidance on the gentle art of catching bream on small surface and diving lures.

We made it to the carpark!

Whilst at the showground we took a day off fishing to do a drive through the National Parks inland from the coast and attempt a walk up Pidgeon House Mountain – something I had done as a young Navy Apprentice when I was 16 yrs old. Surprisingly the 46 years that had passed since this first climb had taken a toll and after we got half way we turned pack to the carpark (must have been something to do with my gammy knee and Linda’s artificial hip?). A cheeky lady we met coming down suggested that it was perhaps too many of the things on my T-shirt that caused the problem? Unfortunately it was a rainy day when we went and thus no photos – some info is here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_House_Mountain

The south coast of NSW is a great place to visit and Milton is a good base to see some of this  - a recommended stopover at Milton Showgrounds.

Western Plains Zoo

Endangered species at the zoo.

We had heard about the Western Plains Zoo ( https://taronga.org.au/taronga-western-plains-zoo) at Dubbo from family and friends and decided we would stay over for a couple nights at a free camp near Dubbo so we could tick this one off our bucket list.

A couple of hippo's ??

The Western Plains Zoo is a little different from other zoos I have visited as it is set out so that you can drive our own vehicle through the exhibit areas and stop where you like to get out and check out the animals.

Linda gets up close and personal with an elephant

I didn’t realise until we visited that the Zoo was a subsidiary of the famous Sydney Taronga Zoo and thus is very well funded and a top class set up.

Piggy back Galapagos Tortoise style ??

We spent five hours slowly driving/walking through various exhibits and would recommend a visit if you are in the area. At $36/person (concession cause we are old ) it’s a good day out and our savings while free camping nearby paid for the day out. The $36 covers 2 days (consecutive) entry to the Zoo - so good value.

This photo has noting to do with the zoo.

For other travelers the free camp at Terramungamine Reserve (about 10 km outside Dubbo) is a small but nice area next to the Macquarie River. There are limited caravan sites but most are level and close to the river. You need to get in by midafternoon to get a site but if your running late there is an overflow area where the road comes into the reserve. Reserve has some nice picnic tables, a couple of fire/BBQ places, and flushing toilets. Sign says only one night but most folk we talked to stayed a couple of days to enable a visit to the town/zoo.

Chaffey Dam

Our Camp at Chaffey Dam

After exactly 4 years we returned to Chaffey Dam - near Nundle just out of Tamworth - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaffey_Dam . The camping area was not quite as we remembered it – the lack of rain meant that the green grass around the dam had disappeared and water levels in the dam were down about 8 meters from our last visit.

View from Hanging Rock above Nundle

However – this is still a beautiful spot – campsites overlooking the dam, scenic views morning and night, hot showers, flushing toilets,  dump point, drinking water on tap, plenty of yellow belly and so quiet.  All for $5/night per car and a $1 donation for a hot shower.

Linda chilling out in the shade - 35C most days!

The Bowling Alley Trust (the group that looks after the public access area and camping area) does a fantastic job with toilets and showers cleaned daily, stacks of rubbish bins, and lots of tables around the dam perimeter.

a couple of nice yella's

While we were here this time the construction for raising the dam height another 6 meters was nearing completion and when they finally get some good rain the dam as we have known it will disappear under water.  Sure going to be a much smaller camping area and bigger dam next time we visit.

Jim and friends

We have been travelling with Jim and Jen, and my cousin Sharon and hubby Gary  for some time now and after Chaffey Dam we are all heading off in different directions – going to be a little sad to say goodbye but we will be sure to catch up again in the future.

Good food, good friends, and sunset- this is living!

The mornings out chasing yellowbelly and the evenings  sitting around having a drink, chat, and watching the sun set  will always be remembered when we think of Chaffey Dam 2016.