Left Warrnambool on the Wednesday. It is only a short drive to the border really. We stopped at Nelson for lunch along the Glenelg River, still in Victoria, to use up our fruit so we didn’t have to toss it all at the border. Nelson is a pretty little place, beautiful along the river. It is only 2kms to the South Aussie border.

We stopped at the border crossing for the obligatory border crossing photo!

Drove onto Mount Gambier. We had no intention of staying long here as we will be coming back along this way, but we found Mount Gambier quite interesting especially with its geological significance. It has been built on the side of an extinct volcano...and only relatively young extinct volcano at that.

The Blue Lake at the top of Mount Gambier is something else. The colour is just amazing with brilliant bright blue water. There are a number of sink holes throughout the area were caves have collapsed.

We drove onto Beachport where we are to stay for the next couple of nights. It looked like we were driving towards a massive bushfire. We were kind of freaked out by that, but there were no road closures so we kept on going, plus we could smell no smoke and there was no heat in the air, conversely the temperature was dropping, which disappointed us a lot as we had been hanging for warmer weather and Mount Gambier had been lovely and warm.

As it turned out what we were looking at was the sea mist rolling in (hence the temp drop) and the sun setting was giving it the orange glow. It kept rolling right in and totally blanketed the town. It was really quite eerie as we had never seen anything like it before. The temperature dropped by at least 10 degrees.

Thursday was a beautiful day. We had a slow start then took a walk along the jetty at Beachport, which is the second largest in Australia. It took us out over the fantastic harbour. It was extremely windy out on the jetty, so we were so glad that we didn’t venture out on our bikes as I am sure that someone would have been blown off!

We packed a picnic lunch and set off to find some sand dunes to slide down. We found some in the national park area at 5 mile rocks. The kids had a lot of fun sliding down on their boogie boards. On the way pack we found the Salmon Hole...recommended by friends for sand dune sliding too! Here the dunes went right down into the ocean. The kids had a blast sliding right into the water, but I found it hilarious watching them race right out the icy cold liquid!!! They we were having a grand old time. A travelling British family came and joined us. Tyler, also 8 years old, got along fabulously with the boys. We decided to join them for a BBQ dinner.

Packed up yet again on Friday and drove into Robe to have a little looksee, before going onto to have lunch at Kingston SE, home of the Big Lobster!

We moved out of town a few clicks to the free camp area known as “The Granites”....Thankyou Camps 6. There is really nothing there but a car park on the beach, but it was really quite lovely all the same, and certainly not deserted. We had a swim by the granite rocks in the water. The place was beautiful in its simplicity. The sun set was magnificent, and the kids had really enjoyed themselves playing in the water and the sand. Finished the evening with a rowdy game of Pictureka!!!

Cool change...rephrase...cold change overnight. The temp plummeted and the rain and winds came along too. We stayed onto to have a lazy day in the van...there was really no reason to move on as it was cold and wet everywhere.

Early start the next morning though as we drove along the Coorong National Park. This is where the Murray River extends along the coast in a series of lakes. We stopped a few times to take in the serenity and the scenery.

Drove onwards and crossed the Murray River at Wellington on a 24 hour run free public ferry...now that’s what I call service!

We drove around the Lakes and onto Victor Harbour.