2022-03 Ballarat to South Australia

Halls Gap

Halls Gap has some good facilities including an excellent brewery and an Indian restaurant where we were served by a Japanese robot.

Grampians Hike 1

On the first full day there we did a relatively short hike up Chataqua peak. It is a 5.6km loop with an elevation gain of 220m and has some spectacular views over Halls Gap. It was sufficient to get us into hiking mode again. Photos below.

Grampians Hike 2

On the second day, emboldened by our enjoyment of the hike on day one, we decided to tackle a more challenging route. We did the Halls Gap to the Pinnacles loop. Whilst supposedly only 8.5km long, the elevation gain on this hike is 500m. Not only that, but much of the walk is over bare jagged rock formations making it vastly more challenging than the numbers suggest. It is very steep both up and down. In addition, some of the steps in the ‘Grand Canyon’ were damaged which meant that we had to take an additional 2.5km detour. We took a picnic and ate at the top whilst enjoying spectacular scenery. Photos below.

Hahndorf

The drive to Hahndorf was without incident. We passed through Bordertown which has little to recommend it and we stopped to look at the silo art in Coonalpyn. The accommodation in Hahndorf at Manna by Haus was fine and very central. We did no hiking in Hahndorf and spent much of the time wandering up and down the main street and also took a bus trip to Mount Barker to visit the Prancing Pony brewery which served excellent beer.

Fleurieu Peninsula

Since we could not get a ferry to Kangaroo Island before 3pm on the Saturday that we travelled, we decided to use the day to take a look at Deep Creek Conservation Park on the Fleurieu Peninsula which was pretty much on our way. It was wonderful and deserved more of our time than we were able to give it. We plan to come back.

Kangaroo Island

We then caught the ferry over to kangaroo Island where we had 5 nights booked at the Kangaroo Island Lodge at American River. The room, and indeed the whole hotel, was in need of modernisation but it was clean and adequate. The highlight of the place is definitely the restaurant which not only served good food but moderately healthy food too. Something that is not easy to find in rural Australia. Good pick Kirsten!

Kangaroo Island Hike 1

On the first day, we did a walk called the cannery walk northeastwards along the coast to a disused fish cannery which was abandoned in the 1890s. The walk was gentle and only 4.2km. However, it was so interesting that we managed to make it last more than 3 hours by taking many photographs and side trails.

Kangaroo Island Hike 3

For the third day we chose to drive to Kingscote, the largest town on the island. We looked around the town and then discovered that there is a 8km coastal walk starting at Kingscote and so off we went.

Kangaroo Island Hike 4

On day 4, we did a mixture of things. We began the day with a lucky sighting of endangered Glossy Black Cockatoos around the hotel. We even managed to get photos. We then went for a short 4km hike in Pelican lagoon nature conservation area followed by a walk on the beach at Pennington Bay. We rounded off the activities with a climb up Prospect Hill. It was not very far but there were 400 steps. Pennington Bay allowed us to see the Southern Ocean in all its glory and Prospect Hill is the hill climbed by Matthew Flinders in 1802 to get his bearings Kangaroo Island (southaustralianhistory.com.au).

Adelaide

So we left Kangaroo Island and headed for a few days in the city of Adelaide. Here are a few shots in and around Adelaide. Of particular interest to Rob was the Albert bridge over the river Torrens that was built by a company called Patent Shaft (HISTORY | Patent Shaft) in Wednesbury in the UK. That huge factory was less than 4 miles from where Rob grew up.

Barossa Valley

We left Adelaide and made the short one hour drive to the Barossa valley where we found a lot of massive wineries producing wine on a major industrial scale.

The Coorong

On our way to Mount Gambier, we stopped off to see the amazing place called the Coorong. The Coorong is a brackish lagoon between an enormous sand bar, well over a hundred kilometres in length, and the coastline. The lagoon contains a mixture of sea water and water from Lake Alexandrina at the mouth of the Murray.

Mount Gambier and Surrounds

We stayed in Mount Gambier for 3 nights and visited a number of places including the famous lakes and sinkholes right there in Mount Gambier.

Tantanoola Cave

About 30km outside Mount Gambier is a remarkable cave (Tantanoola Cave) that simply amazed us with the staggering amount of what they call ‘decoration’ i.e. stalactites, stalagmites, drapery and the like. We had the cave to ourselves for 30 minutes. A real highlight of the trip, here are a few shots.

Port Macdonnell

We then began to head back home and stopped off at a place called Port Macdonnell which is known for a large rock lobster fleet.

Cape Northumberland

Cape Northumberland is the most southerly point in South Australia and boasts some very impressive scenery very reminiscent of the ‘twelve’ apostles on the great ocean road in Victoria. It is known for being the site of the lighthouse that raised the alarm of the truly awful wreck of the SS Admella.

Port Fairy and return home

Our wonderful holiday over, we returned home. On the way, we spent a night in Port Fairy and another with our good friends Allan and Lorelle in Geelong where we attended the annual beer festival. We had spectacular weather for the whole trip with only one morning of light drizzle. The weather on our return home reminded us why we needed the holiday.