We headed off early today – an alarm at 7am (well early for us on holiday!) and on the road around 7.30am. We headed first across to Port Fairy for a quick look round. We knew that it would be busy as today is the start of the long weekend and the Port Fairy Folk Festival and, sure enough, even at 8.45am it was heaving with people having breakfast at trendy...
Late yesterday we had an epiphany, but it was not of the good kind …. We realised that Australians celebrate Labour Day, but … they don’t all celebrate it on the same day. In fact, the Victorians seem to like their Labour Day a week later than all the states further west. This left us with something of a conundrum because the long weekend means that...
A mix of things today. The day started with a glimpse of weird Victoriana. We drove a short way to the east of Mount Gambier to the Umpherston sinkhole. This is, as the name suggests, a limestone sinkhole. The cave that was originally formed by the limestone dissolving eventually became so unstable that the roof collapsed, forming the sinkhole. Some of the sinkholes...
This morning we escaped the campsite before 10am ensuring we weren’t sanctioned for being lazy …. We left Robe and headed half an hour down the road to a town called Beachport. This does pretty much what is says on the tin – it has a beach and it used to be a port. It is now though a lovely spot. We parked at the tourist information (combined again...
Our first full day in the campervan today and we overslept! Check-out times on campsites are apparently 10am and can in some places be rigidly enforced. Luckily at Mount Barker it wasn’t as we didn’t leave until about 10.45! From there we headed initially east and then turned off the A1 onto the B1 – Princes Highway. This long, straight road took us...
Today the campervan beckoned … We have booked a campervan so that we can head across to Melbourne. The only issue was that the campervan pick was about an hour’s walk away. So we could have just got a taxi, but no … walking an hour up a steep hill into the Adelaide Hills in 25 degree heat seemed like the best way, so we went for that. It was...
A leisurely start to the day saw us reversing our route from the airport – ferry to Elizabeth Quay, train to Redcliffe (changing at Perth Central) and bus to the airport ….. An easy run which meant that we were a couple of hours early at the airport. Turns out that the flight caterers were not as a ahead of the game as us and the flight ended up leaving...
Continuing the theme of syllabally-challenged names, today we went to Freo – perhaps better known as Fremantle. This vernacular diminutive – Freo – is what most locals call the port at the mouth of the Swan River. We had been through on the ferry to Rotto yesterday, but from the water it looked fairly unprepossessing – mainly just port-like...
Today we decided to have a day out to Rottnest Island. However, never ones to waste time with excess syllables, the locals simply call it Rotto. Rottnest Island is about 11 miles to the west of Fremantle, so to get there we picked up the Rottnest Express ferry (Go Rotto!) from Barrack Street jetty at 8.45. This took us on a great run down the beautiful Swan River for...
We woke far too early – hardly surprising given the jet lag, but with a nice sunny (and hot!) day in prospect we decided to head off early. We took the very handy ferry from South Perth across to Elizabeth Quay which is very handy for the city. Our destination though was Kings Park, just to the west of the city centre. Kings Park is one of the largest inner...