January 16- the day after the great ocean road

After the long trip along the great ocean road, a good nights rest was needed. We both got to swim in a pool to cool of that night too which was really helpful for me at least. This little holiday park had a nice cabin for us, with a little kitchen, nice TV and a good shower. It was nice to settle in and change out all the clothes in our suit cases and get some blogging done. We both had a lot of sun that day and were pretty wiped. The next morning we got up and out by 10 just like every other morning, no sleeping in for us. We hit the road after Jess swiped all the instant coffee from the room. We were about 15 minutes out town when the scenic turnoffs started again, I was happy to turnoff and check it out. The road was nice and small barely fitting two cars side by side, but sure enough 80km/h. We pull up and to it and check it out, I saw a path that was before the platform where people had walked. I said hey lets be a little adventurous, it wasn't nearly as busy as the the other sites along the great ocean road, so we took a walk on the wild side and went out on the cliffs. Ignoring the warning "unstable cliffs, you may die." The picture below shows that it was worth it.

 

We didn't see much else along the way, and were really tired already from all the walking and hiking the last few days and decided we would head to Portland. We had looked in the booklets we in Port fairy and decided a nice relaxing day on the beach would suit us nicely. We flew along down into Portland on the way we saw a huge wind farm, there were hundreds and hundreds of wind mills along this road. They had a tourist spot too check it out but it was 38C outside we were not game for being in the heat with out the ocean. I sweat a lot on this leg of the trip, the air really got dry. We hoped out of the car in Portland right at the Port, and walked down the stairway on too the beach. Let me tell you the brochure didn't lie that this was a nice beach.

Our first Jellyfish expierence!

 After a good 3 hour stint on the beach, a couple health burns and a good shower, we hit the road again. We made a pit stop for a nice cold drink from maccas (MacDonald's). We good some nice frappes and zipped out of town....

oh wait wrong way....

turn around....

O this way

 On too Mount Gambler. We hit he grocery store, can you tell what I had a craving for.

This part of the drive was the most movie like experience of Australia. It was wide open land, very burnt and grassy with a dry hit. In the middle of this drive toward Adelaide. It was the most continuous time in the car we had spent. After about 2.5 hours and almost 280km we pulled over at the petrol station (gas station) We both got some ice cream and of course had my first really worrisome car experience here. As i was getting back in the car I notice a nice coolant leak coming from under the car.  Pulled over to check it out, it was just an overflow because the dealer filled the coolant too high and we hadn't really run the car hard yet, crisis averted.

We stopped off in a little town before the Coonawarra Wine region called Penola. We stoped in at the Information center and asked the lady for some winery information and where the cheapest place was to stay. She gave us what we asked for and headed over. The Manger at this hotel was really awesome, he let us use the laundry in the back of the bar, told us what the good wineries were and booked us a sweet tour at Mejella wines with one of his really good friends that was the Vineyard Manger there.

The laundry was a a good thing but we didn't have time to dry all our clothes so we had to use the blinds to dry most everything. Everyone must have though we were crazy when they looked at our window.