Day 14 Mt Gambier to Colac

Day 14 Mt Gambier to Colac
Via the Great Ocean road

Woke up in the Mt Gambier hotel... David wanted an early start, but it was raining and grey so he took to showing us some sights of Mt Gambier. I was not initially impressed. This grey city was lush and green but surely it was as boring as every other South Australian City?

WRONG

We went to the Umpherstone Sink hole.
Sinkholes are formed when the roof of a cave collapses. We walked through the raining garden, lush green breautiful plants and surroundings. There is a pair of legs.. that are supposed to represent a sink hole.

Tell me they don't look like stockings or something...

I turned the corner and just said.. WOW!

The prettiest garden I have even seen, in a big hole!! Totally amazing and the drizzle made it even better with the hanging vines and roses



We investigated this garden before moving on to the next hole.. Mt Gambier seems to be filled with holes... The next one was next to the library. Not as large but still impressive.




 From here we headed to the Valley Lake, a great place to see the city as a whole.
David wanted to see the Blue lake which is the source of the city's water. The lake is cobalt blue. Alas we saw it on a grey day so it was reflecting the grey sky. The edges were an amazing blue through to on a sunny day, it would be quite impressive.


We had to leave as we had a long drive to Geelong.

Next stop was Portland. David drove there so I could see a ship or a lighthouse. What a pretty little seaside town. It was even in Victoria.

Whaler's Point lighthouse

I love lighthouses. The only ship in port was ironically the Portand. LOL

The great Ocean road is one of the best roads in australia. Highly recommended that all aussies go and travel it.
Alas today was horrible. BUT by the time we got to the first view, the Bay of Islands, the blue sky was peaking through.. we saw the front coming towards us so the race was now on.







By the time we got to the 12 apostles the front had caught us. SO to the west I saw this....


and to the east....



We gave up on sightseeing and headed for Geelong. When I FINALLY got vodafone service, I rang around Geelong and surrounds and found all hotels were booked out due to a few sports festivals. Hmm We rang around the surrounding towns and got the same answer.
David pulled into Colac and asked at the Colac central Hotel. The man had a room so we took it. He had just taken over running the motel and it was quite funny.
We had a great dinner and Koen bought my favourite wine. We drank most of the night but then the pain in my mouth was took much and I had to lie down.  :-( I crashed without doing any photos of GPS of journals.
David had to drive 800 odd KM to get to Canberra so we had to get up early..


this post is too long... so one to Day 15 in the next post