I’ve been very remiss in my blogging, once I got to Adelaide, things have gotten a bit hectic but I’m going to try to fill in the blanks.
Port Fairy was lovely and much bigger than I expected and it must be big because it has 3 pubs. Portland was another surprise, much bigger than Port Fairy because it has a set of traffic lights and the quick drive around turned into nearly 2 hours – checking out the main street and the wharf. I was really surprised to see so much timber at the wharf and wondered where it all came from……I was soon to find out. In the meantime I drove
down to Cape Bridgewater to see the petrified forest and more scenic coastline. I decided to take what I thought would be the road less travelled or in this case the highway less travelled and go through Nelson (blink and you miss it) and into Mt Gambier rather than go via the Princes Highway. Well, that’s where all the timber came from at Portland wharf because the ‘highway’ I took is also the logging route. I can only be eternally grateful that 99.8% of the logging trucks were going in the opposite direction. It was amazing to see the miles and miles and miles of pine forests though.
Crossing the border into SA, there were three noticeable differences. The first being that the roads improved dramatically and the second was the bugs. In over 3000kms I’d had only a couple of bugs on the windscreen, as soon as I got over the border the bugs were kamikaze-ing themselves and I was having to try and see through the splatter. I really don’t think I’ve ever cleaned my windscreen so many times as I have in the last week. And while the roads were better they were also the straightest stretches of the entire trip. The best part about being in SA was that the speed limit went up to 110. Which meant I could now do 110 legally and the occasional bout of 120, I even managed 130 for a bit…..just to see if a 1.5 litre Honda Jazz can actually go that fast.
My aim for the day was Robe, and while I drove straight through Mt Gambier and made an unscheduled pit stop at Millicent ,where the woman at the Info centre advised that Beachport was worth having a look at. And Beachport was lovely with more great ocean scenery and lots of great surfing spots (not that I partook). Robe has obviously grown up since I was there 20+ years ago and I was suitably impressed. Went for walk along the cliffs and back along the beach, around the harbour and back to the hotel, then had an excellent schnitzel (I can never go past a good schnitz) at the Caledonian Hotel. I had a really really lazy morning the next and slowly walked down the main street to a cafe for breakfast and meander back past some beautiful cottages that were built in the 1850’s, especially a couple of old Whaler’s Cottages that are now B&B’s.
My dawdling was really just putting off the obvious as this was the last leg of my trip. Kingston was a bit of a non-event however the drive along to Coorong was beautiful. Straight, straight roads made the driving easy and having views most of the way was great. I was amazed at the size of the Coorong. Again, there was lots of stopping and u-turns along the way for photo ops. I’m sure I could have arrived days earlier if I hadn’t stopped for so many photos. Meningie heralded the end of the coastline and saw the road head inland for the run into Adelaide.
And alas, that’s where the trip ended. Someone told me I should just keep driving and thought did enter my head several times but it’s that damn cash thing that made me stop.
Well that was all 5 weeks ago and it’s now October…..time flies waaaay too fast.
So what have I been up to. I got into Adelaide on Wednesday afternoon and spent a couple of days getting myself together and the weekend house hunting. Then started work on the Monday. The following weekend was huge, I went to the Royal Adelaide Show (which was so much better than the Ekka, I never found the Ekka lived up to the hype) in the afternoon with one of my sisters and finally got to see “Empire” (I’d missed it in Brisbane) in the evening with my other sister. And on Sunday I went up to Burra (about 160kms north of Adelaide) with a bunch of keen photographers to shoot at the Gorge. I needed a weekend to get over my weekend. The next weekend I moved into my house and in some wild delusion thought that I’d be totally sorted in a day….huh!! which of course took the entire weekend plus some. And the last two weekends have seen the end of the nesting phase and now I’m ready to get out and about. I’ve been at my job for 5 weeks and I’m still not entirely sure what I’m meant to be doing although it seems to be mainly compiling MDR’s (Manufacturer’s Data Reports) and it’s not what I was expecting but I turn up everyday and it pays…..not particularly well but it’s a job.
The house I’m renting is way way out in the boon docks (well to me it is), being 45 mins from the CBD but it’s only 10 mins to work and there’s only 1 traffic light on the way. Unlike Brisbane, that seems to go out in a circular pattern from the CBD, Adelaide is sandwiched between the hills and ocean and is long and skinny and very spreadout. Whereas in Brisbane 45 mins would have you at the Gold Coast or getting into semi-rural, 45 mins in Adelaide is getting to the outer suburbs before it starting going into acreage. My place is nice, nearly brand new, 3 bedrooms…okay 2 bedrooms and a study so it’s very spacious and my little tv that used to seem a decent size in my old place now looks tiny. I have a double garage that you can access through the house which is a total novelty…..I didn’t even have a concrete driveway in Brisbane, let alone under cover.
The bike paths in Adelaide are impressive….puts Brisbane to shame….and I was really looking forward to riding here because, for the most part, it’s pretty flat but it’s been so ridiculously windy. I went for a ride the other morning before work and got attacked by a magpie, not just one thump on the helmet but three, so I might have to give that a miss for another month or two.
Okay, that’s enough……