Heading towards Adelaide!

So as it turns out, there's not a great deal between the Great Ocean Road and Adelaide - a few little towns here and there but mostly one big drive! 

Our first major town after the Great Ocean Road was Warrnambool - another contender for Australia's most ridiculous place name. Here we found a fun playpark with an adult zipline! We pulled over and had a bit of a play:

Also in Warrnambool is a shipwreck coast display, which is meant to be excellent but cost $25 dollars. The zipline was free, so we went for that!

On the way out we headed towards an extinct volcano which supposedly had one of the biggest densities of wildlife in the area. It's called Tower Hill and below is a photo of the crater:

And here's another of Charlotte standing on the crater's rim:

We kept an eye out for koalas and had a good walk - unfortunately all we really found in terms of wildlife was a few emus running around. Photos exist but I can't find them at the moment within the thousands of photos we have! (Also, due to the extremely awful internet we have access to here, I can only put photos on this blog that have auto-backed up and unfortunately can't upload the good quality, large pictures!)

After Tower Hill, we stopped at a nice surf spot called The Cuttings, a long deserted beach with 3 other surfers in. I had a good surf with a few stingrays swimming around while Charlotte napped in the van.

From there, we visited Portland. Portland has a large number of wind farms and lighthouses and not alot else. It does, however, boast a 'petrified' forest which we felt compelled to visit. As you can probably tell, it was cold and windy:

Looking out to sea at the fur seal colony - supposedly 650 individuals strong  but we couldn't see any. Mind you, we don't have much luck spotting wildlife.

The petrified forest: essentially just stone erosion that's formed tree-trunk like structures. These hollow limestone tubes covered quite a large area around a headland known as Cape Bridgewater.

Moving on from Portland, we wound our way further inland towards Umpherston, where there is a famous sinkhole. Formed when rainfall eroded the limestone underneath the gardens, forming a giant hole under the ground, the ground eventually collapsed into this enormous hole. In 1886 it was turned into a local landowner's personal botanic garden, complete with a mini-boating lake within it. The lake is no longer there, but it is still a botanic garden and very well maintained.

The sinkhole - with Charlotte down inside!

We visited the sinkhole on quite a rainy day - and this led to Charlotte slipping and hurting her leg and covering herself in mud. We made out way back to the van and spent the best part of half an hour scrubbing boots, coats and other items of clothing with wet wipes.

After this we stopped for the night at the town of Robe, where we had delicious and cheap Fish and Chips at the harbour. We had intended to camp in a national park campground, but we found this to be both partially impassible for the van and very dark and isolated, with no one there and no phone reception. So we consulted Wikicamps and then decided we were going to sleep down right on the beach car park and go to sleep to the sound of waves. We woke up to find a surf school parked next to us so we had breakfast and carried on.

Continuing on our way, we came across the 17m tall 'Big Lobster' - yet another of Australia's big things, which appear to be everywhere. We stopped for all of 30 seconds to take this photo:

The road became increasingly desolate and tedious after that as we drove up the Coorong national park. This was a boring and isolated drive. We stopped to change drivers and as I wandered off to explore and stretch I accidentally ran through a partially decaying kangaroo carcass. 

And then I decorated the van. And thoroughly disinfected my hands afterwards.

On the way we were looking at Wikicamps for somewhere nice to stay and found the number for a farm which let people stay on their grounds. We called them up and arranged to stay - $20 for both of us to camp up and use their purpose built facilities! It turns out that in the summer the farm is a nudist camp and as such the shower had a large door-sized window giving views out to the cows and sheep, which was interesting. Fortunately the lovely couple who accommodated us did so fully clothed and we were the only people there. They own a local bakery as well and the farm is a hobby farm. We popped out to explore Port Elliott and Victor Harbour.

Here's Charlotte in the play park boat.

Before returning to the farm for the night:

The farm had an incredibly affectionate and friendly dog and cat which greeted us as soon as we pulled up.

Charlotte loved the cat.

The next morning, we awoke to find 2 Cornish pasties left on the table for us! The couple owned a bakery and the night before I'd mentioned I have a home in Cornwall, so they specially made some pasties for us before leaving for work! I felt pretty bad that I'd missed them and couldn't thank them personally so I sent them a text to let them know they'd been awesome and it made a perfect breakfast (and lunch!).

Charlotte played with the pigs for a while and managed to make friends with one of the piglets:

And we played fetch with the dog for the best part of an hour:

Unfortunately we did have to leave the farm, and we went to Victor Harbour again to walk across the bridge to Granite Island, where there was a penguin colony (which, obviously, we missed as they were at sea or asleep). There was a tram which was pulled by a horse that ran from the island to the mainland but we walked. Granite Island is small and we circumnavigated it in about half an hour, getting great views over the bay and towards Kangaroo Island. 

Below you can see the horse-drawn tram on the bridge:

We didn't go to kangaroo island as the cost to get across was extortionate, so we made do with heading into Adelaide itself and camping in a suburb by the sea called Brighton. Here is Charlotte admiring the sunset before settling down to explore Adelaide the next day.