The Pursuit of Happiness: South Oz

One of Robes beaches.

48 days and 4500 kilometres later, we are finally in our fourth state, (a bloody hot) South Australia. Its about 40 today and I have been at a camping show in Adelaide to buy some 'MaxTrax' (story to follow) and to see how I can keep my freezer from overheating in this insane heat, the answer, a computer fan.

But back to where we left you.

Mt Schank Volcano, view from the top across.

So from Port Campbell we headed along the Great Ocean Road to Port McDonnel, well that was the plan, we actually ended up in Mount Gambia, we had dinner there at the brown lake, the famous Blue Lakes low profile brother. We then headed to Mt Schank, a dormant Volcano for the night where we stayed with numerous other campers (who obviously all had the book 'camps').

Sarah braving the cool water of little blue lake
(she had an allergic reaction to the algae and developed red welts all over her body

From there we headed back to the coast, stopped into a few small fishing towns along the way and ended up in Lobster town, Robe. Robe is another town I would recommend visiting if you are around the area, beautiful beaches, headlands, historic buildings and some rather hefty sand dunes (this is where the MaxTrax would have come in handy). We found some national parks on the map (little dip) so off we went to find a place to set up camp. At the entrance of the park there was the biggest lobster head I have ever seen.

Killer dune, Picture does not do justice to the size.

The track leading to the first camp was rather hairy with many rocks and tree branches is bad spot and quiet a few hills and drops. The first camp looked rather average so we kept going and eventually hit the beach, well sand dunes and then a rocky headland. We got through the first series of dunes with minimal trouble, tyres were on 20psi the dunes were very soft and steep, like nothing I had experienced. We eventually got to the beach after the maze of dunes, but the beach was also very soft, if not softer, so momentum was hard to gather. We stopped in the hardest bit and I let the tyres down to 15psi. It was getting dark and I didn’t want to be stuck with such a rough sea on the incoming tide. We very quickly realised that all three cuttings/dunes were rather steep, so we proceeded to charge this one dune, it wasn’t the steepest nor the least steep but it went straight to the camp we needed to get to, after 40 mins of charging and getting ever so close I got the shovel out and Sarah and I cleared the track and finally after a loud ‘whoosh’ noise coming from the engine at one stage where I thought I had blown a hose we got over the dune and cruised back to camp where we had celebratory rums and the car got some cool coolant.

We were off again that morning, stopping by more interesting little towns until we got to Coorong National Park where we stayed the night. Coorong is quiet large and consists of thick bush land, winding water networks and lakes, soaring sand dunes and then an exposed rugged beach. We didn't stay long, regret that now but i'm too eager to get to Western Australia and sarah was excited to see her GrandParents.