Tuesday 8th April

Another action packed day, again in wonderful warm, at times hot, sunshine. No millipedes had attacked in the night I’m glad to say, so it was on with the adventure, starting in Robe. This is another medium sized town that was in the top 10 tidiest medium sized towns in SA for several years. ( I must remember to keep calling it “medium sized” as that was the category it was judged in, and they get upset if you call it a nice “little” town.) It certainly is very neat and tidy – even the building /renovation that’s going on seems to be kept very controlled. There are lots of historic bits and we started at the shore with the Chinese Memorial. Robe was inaugurated as a port in 1847, and in the 1860’s, when the gold rush was in full swing, about 45 vessels had landed around 20,000 Chinamen eager to try to make their fortunes. They landed in Robe, which was a Freeport, rather than in Victoria, where there was a £10 per head charge for landing passengers. They then paid local guides to take them to the unguarded Victorian border, and then on to the goldfields, a total distance of 550km. Many died during the gold years but many stayed and made their homes in Oz – this is one of the memorials to them. Opposite this is another memorial, this one to Matthew Flinders who, along with Frenchman, Nicholas Baudin, explored and charted the coast of SA. They also have a heritage trail in the town with an interesting twist. Each point of interest has a sign with a mobile phone number. You ring that and get a recorded commentary on the location. Great idea, but at $1.60 plus normal phone charges per location, it can get quite expensive if you do the whole trail.

Robe is still a port but with much less significance these days – local fishermen catch Rock Lobster and the area is famous for these among other sea foods. The harbour is small, but very protected. The old Customs House has been preserved as a museum but was closed today. We took a drive around the other arm of the bay to the Obelisk, at Cape Dombey. This was built in 1855 as the precursor of a lighthouse – signal rockets were fired as a warning about the rocks when ships appeared offshore. There's a lot of coastal erosion going on, and the whole headland is now well undercut, with some big blocks already fallen. I wouldn't take bets on the life of the obelisk, as there is very little now supporting it. Close by is the Encounter Signal, fashioned in 3 parts, the most striking of which is a tall stainless steel column the exact height of the Obelisk. It’s engraved with the names of fishing boats who were fishing from Robe in 2002 when the Signal was built. Like most modern art artefacts, the symbolism can be a trifle difficult to understand! After our historical tour of Robe, which I shan’t bore you with in total, we set off towards Kingston SE, 45kms away. Mount Benson winery is along the road – it seemed very strange to see vines growing so close to the coast when the rest of the terrain looks so dry. Murdup Wines is also along that road (never heard of either of them). According to the brochure, Kingston has one of eight known analemmatic sundials in the world. But Google has details of more than that – you can find out all about them on the web as I’m not going to describe how you make them work – suffice to say that Tom showed me, and it did work! Just down the road from the sundial is a giant lobster. It’s amazing some of the things that we find in these little towns.

From Kingston, we backtracked a little on the Princes Hwy before going east to Narracoote at the junction of the Riddoch and Wimmera Hwys. There are lots of proper caves there – not just holes in the ground – and we went for a tour into the Victoria Fossil Cave. It’s a huge network of caves and passages and very well laid out. There are plenty of stalactites and stalagmites in various stages of growth and it also contains over 20,000tons of sediment full of animal bones, some cave drawings and some fossils. We saw a lot of bones and one fossil and no cave drawings – so, although it was an interesting experience, it didn’t deliver what it said. However, it passed an hour or so.

Back at the visitor centre, we had a cup of tea/coffee (me/Tom) then drove back into Narracoote to Woolworths to shop for dinner and breakfast, having run out of both. We actually got lost driving back into the town and went round in a big circle – Tom’s navigating skills weren’t at their normal level! And I’m no help! But we got it all done and off on the road to Bordertown for tonight’s stay in the Dukes Motor Inn. The road was AWFUL – nice and straight for the most part, but so uneven – if you can imagine being rubbed on an old fashioned washboard it was just like that!! My btm is still suffering 2 hours later! We have a very nice room here with NO millipedes – we actually found a notice saying they’re ugly but harmless at the cave visitor centre, as they have loads there in the loos, horrible creepy things! Harmless they may be but I definitely didn’t want them anywhere near me last night! Tom can’t get access to the internet here, even though the motel has wireless and we can get the signal. The owner wasn’t a lot of help, so we may not be able to post this until later.

So that's it for today and I wish you all a very good night.

Note: We're now at our Wednesday motel and connected first time, so we'll post this now (4.30pm local), and add today's later.