South South Australia

Hi everybody and greetings from Melbourne.  K and I have been on the road the last 3 days driving the Great Ocean Road in Australia.  What a wonderful journey with scenery that is out of this world.  It was a long trip and lots to show you, but as we are getting ready to hit Melbourne this morning, I thought I would just let everyone know we are doing fine (both Moms have asked - sorry for no posts Moms) and give everyone a bit of what we saw on the way here.

The Great Ocean Road is an iconic drive of about 150+ miles along the southern coast of Australia - or more precisely the state of Victoria.  It would be like driving Highway 1 down along the coast of California (except the Great Ocean Road is shorter of course).  Some beautiful coast line, gorgeous beaches and some famous natural coastal formations.

However, to get to the remote Great Ocean Road from Adelaide (in the state South Australia), you need to cross the rest of South Australia and get yourself to the southern coast.  This is not a small trip and takes a full day to accomplish.  SA is big - very big.  About 380,000 square miles.  If it was a US state, it would be #2 behind Alaska.  Texas is only 270000 square miles.  So I can't say we saw all of SA.  We saw just a part.

Still, while most people consider the trip to the coast a bit boring and "unsiteful", K and I still found things to see and do.

First, right out of Adelaide, we visited the little town of Hahndorf.  This is a small town about 15 miles southwest of Adelaide (in the Adelaide Hills region) that was settled by Germans in 1836 (about the same time as the rest of South Australia was settled).  The coexistence of many peoples/cultures in South Australia rivals that of America.

Here is K sampling some (cough cough) German cuisine.

We had breakfast at the White House - of course!

From Hahndorf, we headed further south and east into South Australia (SA) and on our way to the Great Ocean Road.  Roads in Australia look and feel like those in America.  There are super highways that connect the major cities and smaller two lane highways to smaller locations and that lead to more remote locations (like the southern coast).  K and I joked that except for driving on the left, if you close your eyes and forget where you are, you would be hard pressed to put yourself in Australia.  Again, like New Zealand, commercial signage is minimal.  Clean, efficient and well maintained - those are the words I would use to describe the Australian highways.

 

What is a little different is the road signs.  You don't see signs warning you of kangaroo, wombats, koalas, etc. in America  :)   In SA, you'll also see the sign for "Stop Creeping."  Speed, as everywhere, is a major contributor to accidents and deaths on the roads.  SA has a campaign to have people avoid slowly creeping up their speed.  When you first see it, however, you wonder what in the heck are they accusing me of?

 

 Past Adelaide and the Adelaide Hills, the south part of SA is pretty hot and dry most of the year.  I wouldn't call the landscape pretty, but it is unique - you quickly realize "you are not in Kansas anymore".  Lots of open pasture land as well as eucalyptus tree forests (what Australians call gum trees).

You travel kilometers between even the remotest/smallest of towns.  I won't bore you with it, but I have a picture where the entire town fits in one camera frame.

Once you reach the coast of SA, things start to get interesting and you feel the morning and your trip along the Great Ocean Road holds promise.  In Robe, we saw the first of many lighthouses that we'd see on the Southern Ocean drive and we started to see some of the coast that would present itself even better the next day.

 

And before we landed at our hotel for the evening in Mt. Gambier, we spotted a big "mob" of kangaroos.  K was able to snap this photo before they disappeared into the brush (you may have to zoom in a little to see them).  It turns out that would not be the last of our encounter with wildlife on our trip.

We are off for Melbourne, but I'll have more on the southern coast and the absolute stunning sites we saw the past few days.