Into Victoria

We farewelled South Australia after driving through the bushfire ravaged Adelaide Hills.  Luckily no lives were lost in the January bushfires although several houses were destroyed and damage to property and wildlife was substantial.  We had several days with a very smoky atmosphere while the fires raged.


Once into Victoria we turned left off the Dukes Highway at Nhill and travelled a further 70km north to Rainbow where we're spending a few days with friends on their farm.  It was a long day's driving for us, about 500km and we were pleased to stop and set up our camp.

Rainbow is in crop country, with a few sheep in the Wimmera area of Victoria's west.  It's on the northern edge of Lake Hindmarsh, which is usually dry.  Water from the Grampians is released from time to time and allows the lake to fill.  About 30km south of Rainbow, on the Wimmera River, is Jeparit, a small town most notable for being the birthplace of Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, Prime Minster of Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. There's not much else there though.

A few kms north of Rainbow is Lake Albercutya, a popular camping and picnic area.  It used to be a popular spot for water sports but now this lake is dry and rarely has water in it since it is filled from the overflow of Lake Hindmarsh.

There are many murals around Rainbow depicting the history and life of the area.  We've woken each morning to a dawn chorus of the many birds in the area.

After our few days in the Wimmera area of Victoria we've travelled 200km south to Cavendish on the southern side of The Grampians.  After driving for a couple of hours through flat farmland it was nice to see The Grampians rising to the east.  This is the edge of The Great Dividing Range which stretches from far north Queensland, all the way along the eastern side of Australia and then along the south of Victoria.

On our way we made way for this large tractor to pass us on the narrow road.

We've set up camp for a week at the Cavendish Recreation Reserve Campground which is maintained by a local community committee.

Cavendish is about 25km north of Hamilton which is the centre of the Victorian wool area.  It;s a great place for us to explore The Grampians while we're here.



The Settlers' Walk follows the south bank of the river and is a pleasant stroll through the river gums and sheep paddocks to a lookout with views of the southern Grampian ranges.

Farewell to South Australia

Our last few days in Gawler were pretty busy.  We had the insurance work done on our caravan and now have a new awning roof and a new door to replace the ones that were damaged in a windstorm at Nabawa WA in September.

We continued with our sightseeing and spent a day visiting the Monarto Zoo, about an hour's drive out of Adelaide near Murray Bridge.  Monarto was to be a satellite city to Adelaide in the 1970s, a multi-function-polis.  The only problem was that no-one wanted to live there!




The zoo is an annexe of the Adelaide Zoo and is an open plains zoo.  There is an active breeding program for many of the animals.  We boarded the bus after lunch for a guided tour through the animal enclosures.

The animals are free to roam within their enclosures and we drove past mongolian horses (none left in the wild anywhere in the world), deer, antelope, bison and giraffes.  We saw an ostrich taking a dust bath (not quick enough with the camera though), hyena, zebra and lions.

Black and white rhinoceros are both endangered.  They are both grey with the white rhinoceros a misnaming of the dutch words for wide-mouthed (weid-mond).  The main difference is in size and in the structure of their mouths with black rhinoceros being smaller with a small, hook shaped mouth; they are close to extinction.  White rhinoceros are much larger with a larger, flatter mouth; endangered.  Their horns are made of keratin, like our hair and fingernails and are similar to horses hoofs.

After we got off the bus back at the visitor centre we walked to the chimpanzee enclosure.  On the way we passed the meerkats where we watched their amusing antics before wandering through Wallaby Gorge with its ring tailed yellow-footed rock wallabies.

Then it was on to the chimpanzee enclosure which is supported by the Jane Goodall Foundation.  Most of the chimpanzees were inside the state of the art, glass walled, air conditioned, internal enclosure.  Only a handful were out in the hot sun.  They're not stupid, it was about 37C and they are free to move in and out at will.

A great day and a great place to visit.

The next day we called into the Jet fighter Museum at Parafield Aerodrome.  Parafield is Adelaide's secondary airport and it caters mainly for private and charter planes and helicopters.

The Jet Fighter Museum is very hands on with many open cockpits for aspiring pilots to sit in.  There's a small amount of memorabilia and a few planes that are airworthy.  Some are used for tourist joy flights.  Some of the planes we saw were a Mirage, a Sea Venom, a drone, a Chipmonk and a Corsair.  We also had a guided tour of the workshop where restoration work is undertaken.

Welcome to 2015

We arrived in Gawler, about 50km north of Adelaide in mid-December.  Our caravan is parked in the backyard of caravanning friends - fellow members of the Bushtracker Owners Group.  The festive season has been happy and busy.  We hope you have all had a happy festive season too.

We've had several trips into the Adelaide city area to meet up with friends and relatives, and to do some shopping.  It's been great to catch up with those we only see when we're travelling through South Australia.  We've had the opportunity to do some family history research - both of us have ancestors who were early settlers in South Australia; Cherryl's family date from 1839, making them pioneer settlers (pre-1845), and Robert's ancestors landed here in 1854.  Our elderly aunts and uncles have had photos, stories and other information that have filled in some gaps for us and have given us new directions to research; and we've been able to reciprocate with some of our information.


While we've been based at Gawler we've been able to explore the Barossa Valley.  A couple of visits to Maggie Beer's Farmshop have yielded some goodies for the pantry, including bottles of her famous verjuice.  Wines from some of Australia's best wineries in made their way to our wine cupboard - but didn't last long!

Nearby Kapunda is a pretty Barossa Town with heritage architecture and plenty of imaginative artwork.  The museum is comprehensive and it has a slate floor incorporating a map of the area.  The war memorial has a memorial to Sister Vivian Bullwinkle, who came from Kapunda, and is also dedicated to nurses and women who served in World War II.

Pastoralist Sir Sidney Kidman lived here and he donated his home to the Education Department - it is now the Kapunda High School.  We were able to have a look inside because the principal was there on the day we called in.

We had a day trip to Port Adelaide, to visit the markets and have a look around.  Port Adelaide has changed so much over the years.  Cherryl's grandfather was the superintendent of the Port Adelaide Methodist Mission for about 10 years (1956-1966).  Over the past 30 or so years it's had a facelift and, like Fremantle and Kalgoorlie in WA, has a burgeoning tourist industry with several excellent museums and many tours and cruises available.  

We visited the Maritime Museum which has displays ranging from indigenous exhibits to settlers arrivals, shipwrecks, wartime and modern maritime displays.  Well worth a visit if you're in the area.  There's also a family history research area where ship's logs and passenger lists are available online.

On one day trip to the city we toured the South Australian Library, incorporating the Mortlock Library which was the original library and museum for SA.  The free tour was very informative.  The bookshelves in the Mortlock Library are filled with old books - fiction and non-fiction - and anyone can come in and pick up a book to read within the building.  Again, there are interesting exhibits illustrating South Australia's colourful history.

Walking from the railway station to the library we passed several statues of prominent South Australians. Sir Mark Oliphant and Dame Roma Mitchell (former governors of SA), Mary Lee (suffragette), Lord Florey and Sir Lawrence Bragg (Australia's First Nobel Laureate for Physics) are among the bronzes nestled among the cycads.

After six weeks at Gawler we're giving our friends some respite and have booked 2 weeks in a timeshare resort at Goolwa at the south of the Fleurieau Peninsula.  We're only about 70km south of Adelaide and the weather is about 5C-10C cooler here.  Goolwa is at the southern end of Lake Alexandrina, one of the lower lakes of the Murray River system.  A couple of kms from our resort is the barrage which holds back the salty water of the Southern Ocean from the fresh water of Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert.

Across the bridge to Hindmarsh Island and we could see the Murray Mouth, where the waters of the mighty Murray River reach the sea after travelling from their source in the Snowy Mountains, along the New South Wales/Victorian border, picking up water from the Murrumbidgee (NSW) and Darling (Queensland and NSW) River systems, and then southwards through South Australia to the lower lakes and the sea.

While we've been here we've explored the Fleurieau Peninsula - there's plenty of great scenery - and have sampled some of the great food and wine on offer.  Local markets have given us the opportunity to support local businesses in Port Eliott, Goolwa and Victor Harbour.  About 50km north is picturesque Strathalbyn, a town with several bakeries/cafes and antique and secondhand shops.  We found a "junk shop" which was stacked and packed with all manner of bric-a-brac.

Cape Jervis, on the south-western tip is the place to catch the ferry to Kangaroo Island, which can be seen in the distance as it's only about 10km across the water.  Ferry tickets are expensive for this short journey ($80 each return for pensioner passengers and $188 return for the car) so we'll leave it for another time when we can take the caravan across and stay a couple of weeks.

 Just north of Victor Harbour are several dairy farms and cheesemakers.  We called into the dairy goat farm where we bought some delicious goats cheese and some wine from the nearby winery.  Then it was on to the Alexandrina Cheesery, an award winning dairy and cheesery with delicious milkshakes made from milk from their own very contented jersey cows and a cheeseplatter for lunch (with a doggie bag that will provide lunch for tomorrow too!).  The Fleurieau has a great range of food to choose from.

We're heading back to Gawler tomorrow and will be there for about a week to get the insurance work done on our caravan (at last) and to attend the Camping and Caravan Show on the 19th February.  After that we will be heading eastwards towards Victoria before making our way towards Canberra for Easter.  2015 is filling up fast and will be spent on the eastern side of the country.  We'll still manage to do many kms as we travel north and south during the year.