To the bat cave!

One of the great things about travelling around Australia is the availability of free public BBQ's whether at camp sites or in the local park, you're never far from a barbie and it's great. We left Mt Barker having made use of the barbie to cook a full English breakfast, essential before a day in the car, I'm sure you'll agree. It's a hot plate really, perfect to fry an egg on, cook up snags (sausages to you and me) and pretty much anything else you fancy. Our big brekkie was also for stomach lining reasons as our first stop was Langhorne Creek, a lovely wine region in South Australia where we visited two wineries: Bremerton, a small family run vineyard with female wine makers and Bleasdale one of the oldest vineyards in South Australia. Wine has become a major feature on our trip, in part due to our fantastic wine touring book which has led us to some excellent cellar doors. It's also due to the fact that many vineyards sell direct this way and it's great to stop by for a taste and a chat, something you just don't get much of in France or much of Europe. As one one of the winemakers we spoke to put it: "the French look at you funny and expect or demand you to buy some, the Aussies just love to drink it."
After the wine and a picnic lunch (epic sandwiches made up from the rest of our brekkie!) It was onward to Kingston S.E (to distinguish it from Kingston elsewhere I believe, it's all too easy to look up somewhere in the index of the guidebook thinking it's where you are but it turns out to be somewhere with the same name a few hundred kilometers away. And yes, I speak from experience and yes it was confusing for f not disastrous!) We thought the night would be spent in Kingston SE but other than Larry the Lobster, Kingston left a lot to be desired. Larry being another 'big thing' that we saw, featured no less in Bill Bryson's book 'Down Under' though sadly the associated tourist complex has been closed for a few years so we couldn't spend our tourist dollar even if we wanted to. A few obligatory photos with Larry and we moved on to Naaracoorte, home to some pretty awesome Limestone caves, so awesome in fact they are a world heritage site. We spent the night there so we were able to visit the caves in the morning.
Many of the caves can only be accessed with a guide so we opted for a tour of the bat cave and cathedral cave and were able to visit a third cave for free. We didn't go into the bat cave as the sound and smell would be overwhelming but we were shown amazing live footage of the bats in action as well as some amazing archive footage on TV screens and were given a real insight into this fragile colony. The second cave was very majestic and had some interesting stories associated with it. Including the fact that they used to have parties and stag do's in it from the 1800's until relatively recently. The third cave had a lot of water running through it and was really beautiful too.
Onwards to Mount Gambier (Don't worry, we remembered to stop at the Coonawarra wine region) where we saw the beautiful blue lake - very deep and very blue! Also in Mount Gambier we saw a really excellent art exhibition of work by Catherine Edkins who painted Australian pastoral scenes with a focus on horses.
We decided to set up camp somewhere a little off the beaten track and to do some free camping. I decided that Carpenters Rocks on the coast would be better camping than what we had done so far - a caravan park (Mt Barker) and showgrounds (at Naaracoorte). So we tried to find it. Only without proper maps and without the wonders of Sat Nav, it was a bit of guess work. We followed a farm track for a bit too long before eventually finding the right road navigating by the setting sun and my Aunt's parting gift of a compass. We pulled up in a car park where our campsite book suggested we could spend the night and where someone else in a caravan evidently was. Owing to some rather strong winds, they had evidently battened down the hatches, so we decided we'd be better off somewhere more sheltered and parked away from the beach, out of the wind in a public park.
We did go for a windy walk on the beach though (wine in hand) and just watched the waves pound the shore as the sun set. We also spotted some pretty evil looking jelly fish on the beach so made a fairly swift exit. The next day we saw a wild wallaby bedside the road as we made it down towards Portland and possibly our favourite camp site so far...
xAnnie