Day 13

A stinking hot day today - forecast 41, with the aircon going full bore in the the caravan it's still over 30... so its not particularly effective. The forecast for the next week is much more pleasant though with nothing higher than low 30's.

So we decided on a simple plan... head for a nice big shopping centre - problem is they are not that big over here... not the ones around here anyway. So we spent some time at Unley Shopping Centre then a nearby Macca's before heading back to the caravan for afternoon naps.

We might go for a drive up to the Mt Lofty lookout later in the afternoon.

I have changed settings to this blog, so submitting comments should be easier. So if you have tried unsuccessfully, try again, it may work better now.

The attached 2 photos were taken yesterday - one of Gemma in the kitchen sink cooling off and the other of the kids in their new PJ's - especially for Auntie Kirsty... they're the PJ's you gave them all for Christmas... don't they look lovely!

Finally for today - we wish you all a very happy new year!

Day 12

Hi there from Adelaide!
Well we managed to get away at 8.45 am this morning - got to be a personal record!! Lots of packing up last night and Darrin and Jeanette packing up more this morning before two of the three were asleep. Zac is proving himself to be an excellent helper at setting up and taking down camp. He has a great grasp of what happens and in what order and he is really enjoying his role.

We managed to get all the way to Adelaide with only one stop - the kids did really well - the DVD player helped a lot too!!! Zac's new catch cry - we seem to be hearing it really frequently at the moment is " Mum I'm hungry!" So a constant supply and a variety of snacks needs to be on hand in the car (and everywhere else)

Arrived at the van park about 2.15 and set up - dreadfully hot - 39 degrees. So once set up it was off to the pool - it seems so small after the swimming lake at Naracoorte. Back for dinner, baths, stories and bed. Baths tonight took on a slightly different slant for Gemma - I was planning on giving them a sponge bath - Gem took a look at the sink and asked to get in - she fits so she sat in the kitchen sink filled with lukewarm water and drank her milo all while watching the TV. She was happy and no longer grumpy with the heat so we all won! - will try and post pic tomorrow - broadband reception is sporadic here so we wont try anything too fancy.

Just as we were getting the boys ready for bed out next door neighbour asked us if we had seen the koala - about 4 sites up from us there is a koala who hangs out in the branches of what appears to be some sort of maple tree. He is only a couple of meters from the ground so you can get quite a good look at him. It made the boys night with Ethan declaring loudly "I love it"

Day 11

Today we set off to the Sheeps Back Museum in Naracoorte. Dedicated to the history of sheep shearing, country life and a few dinosaur and mega fauna fossils. Zac and Ethan had a wonderful time looking through magnifying glasses at some fossils they were allowed to touch, spinning old grinding wheels around, picking up old bits of shearing equipment and exploring all around them. Walked through the shearing sheds, old post office and old school complete with desks and a very out of tune piano, and through a display of country life though the ages. Darrin and Jeanette were able to recognize some bits and pieces from their childhood - somehow we thought it was not that long ago but when you begin finding aspects of your childhood in a museum you have to wonder!!! ARGHH! Darrin recognized an old Sunbeam mixmaster his mum had and Jeanette recognized an old Sunbeam ceramic kettle that her Auntie Evelyn was using only a few weeks ago and the good old "Speedie" toaster - bringing back many memories of incinerated toast in Echuca!

Afterwards we went to Pioneer Park in town which has a large steam train engine which you are allowed to climb on and in! It is an old "V class locomotive" and it is the oldest and smallest loco on the SA railway lines. however after "77 years of faithful service she was out - moded but not worn out". She is however still a fantastic play place for all little train lovers - even Gem was on it calling out "chugga chugga choo choo".

After a rather nice lunch at the bistro of the Naracoorte Hotel and then naps it was off again to the local swimming lake - the kids really do love this! Even had to buy Gemma new bathers today - she is loving the swimming thing but the rash vest she had did not fit over her head - so she splashed around proudly in her new pink flowered all in one!

Dinner and a quick trip into town to grab a few groceries and back to the van to start the pack up and clean up before we move on tomorrow. It is meant to be 39 degrees for the next couple of days so we want to get on the road early - will wait and see if this manages to occur though.

PS - is anyone reading these - no one is commenting on anything! :-)

Day 10

Hello all,

We decided to have an easy day today.....so after breakfast we

caught up on a little housework and set off to go play mini golf which is located within the caravan park. We played the first nine holes with Zac and Ethan doing reasonably well with the help of Daddy. Gemma just enjoyed running around and on the mini golf greens. Once nine holes were done the kids were a bit worn out and the day was heating up so we took them on a quick mini train track ride which is also located within the park.

Back for the usual lunch and nap routine for three little people. After sleeps we headed back for the swimming lake - the kids love it and Gemma just wants to be able to swim like the boys and keeps walking out into deeper water.

After dinner we went back and played the remaining nine holes of mini golf....The final scores were Daddy - 59, Zac - 69, Ethan 53 and Mummy - 65....YES Ethan is our mini golf Champ!!!!

There are vast numbers of cockatoos and corellas in this area and each evening and morning they fly over and around the caravan park screeching loudly. Fortunately the morning runs do not seem to wake the kids but the nightly run remind me very much of the swarming bats at Mataranka - but fortunately the birds are no where near as smelly.

Got a wonderful phone call this afternoon - Grace Catherine Kennedy - was born at 7.01pm this evening weighing it at 8lb 10. Congratulations Kennedy Clan - can not wait to hold our new niece and cousin.

Day 9

Today we went to South Australia's only world heritage site - Naracoorte Caves. We went on two tours - a self guided walk through the "Wet Cave" and a guided tour through the Alexandra Cave. Both caves had very impressive stalagmites and stalactites formed in limestone - Zac now knows the difference between the two!! Clever kid!! Ethan and Gemma were quite cautious a first of this wandering around in dark damp holes but they soon got into it all. The boys loved each of the different formations we discovered and were great as we wandered around in the darkness. Gemma, however, decided that ten minutes into the Alexandra Cave tour she needed to sleep so curled up on Mummy who then had to carry Little Miss Sleepypants around a cave for half an hour and then up 35 steep steps to get out of the cave.

Home again for lunch and naps - Mummy, Daddy and Zac played several rounds of "Barrel of Monkeys" . After naps we headed off to the fantastic swimming hole again - we all had a great time - Gemma turned as purple as her swimming suit but still refused to get out. Home again for dinner then a wander into town to see some of the fantastic sandstone building and churches.

hmmmm - early night sounds good.

Boxing Day - Day 8

Well it has been a week now since we left - time flies!

We packed up our lovely green site in Mt Gambier this morning and headed off to the town of Naracoorte. Enroute we stopped at the lovely quaint old town of Penola - reportedly one of the oldest towns in South Australia.

Penola has lovely old sandstone buildings and is full of character. The most famous street being Petticoat Lane. A Charming old street full of lovely old cottages in various states of repair and all listed by the National Trust. One of the cottages, Sharam Cottage has a lovely old rambiling garden with a herb and vegetable patch out the back where we were able to pick some herbs to take away with us.

After lunch and a play at a brand new local park - (it has only been open for three weeks) we continued on to Naracoorte. After checking in and setting up we just took some time to do not much around the van. The boys drove trucks in the sandy dirt around the van - getting filthy but loving it. Gem had a lovely time playing with her "little people".

The caravan park backs onto the local swimming pool - a very large swimming lake that has been constructed. So after dinner we put bathers on the kids and headed off down to the lake. It has a graded beach entry area for little people. All three had a lovely time splashing, stomping and wading at the "beach." We dragged them away to warm showers with the promise of returning tomorrow.

Christmas Day

Merry Christmas to all!!!

Three very excited children this morning - Santa had visited and left presents in their sacks. Much oooo - ing and arr - ing and "I love its" were exclaimed! Very entertaining for us to watch!

A special pancake breakfast this morning - Zac will only eat pancakes with vegemite and cheese despite all other sweet offerings! Ethan and Gem enjoyed theirs will a wide variety of condiments!

We headed into the centre of town to see the cave gardens located near the town hall. The cave gardens are another sink hole which although covered with lovely green moss is also doubling as a storm water drain and there was a fair bit of litter spoiling the vista. It does however make us wonder with the number of sink holes around this area - how safe are the surrounding buildings??? We also met a couple of Asian tourists at the gardens and Darrin explaining some of the surrounds to them in simple language when they turned around and declared that they were from Mooroolbark!!!!

Then off to Centenary Tower - the highest point in Mt Gambier - well it is actually on Mt Gambier. A drive to the car park and then a VERY steep walk up the hill to the tower. Walking up alone would have been enough of an effort but pushing two prams up the hill added to the challenge. Zac did really well walking up and down the hill. Great views from the top. It must be a perfect environment for butterflies here as they were quite plentiful but difficult to photograph. Drinks, snacks and several photos later we headed back down the track.

After lunch, arvo naps and a quick trip to the local adventure playground we came home for our Christmas dinner.

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas Day with family and friends.

PS - forgot to add to yesterdays entry that when we were at Dingly Dell there was a sign as a part of the Admella sinking - When the boat went down it was carrying three race horses that - one of the horses died, the other - not sure what happened to it but the third horse - not only did the horse go down on a sinking ship - it swam to land and then was lost for ten days and once they found it they shipped it immediately to Melbourne for a horse race - which incidentally the poor horse was incapable of completing - We really did just feel very sorry for this poor horse and wondered what sense if any the owners had!

Christmas Eve

It was a very hot and windy night – eventually the cool change came through bringing with it some rain. Ethan was up for a while with a sore leg thanks to the bee sting yesterday.

As it was raining fairly consistently we decided to head for the Lady Nelson Discovery Centre as it was indoors. There are a variety of scenes to walk through from the Undersea, wetlands, Aboriginal display – with a hologram, geology display with a neon volcano, plastic modelled cave walk with fossil bones. The boys were fascinated with the bones and fossils lying on the floor so they could get a closer look at them. The walk finished of with a look at the inside of the Lady Nelson – complete with Captain Grant giving a recount of his experiences of sailing her and the leaking roof just added to the whole scene.

Home for some toasted cheese sandwiches and naps. Once all were awake we headed off to Port MacDonnell – an incredibly rugged and windswept landscape. With the two smaller people on leashes to prevent them being blown off the cliff tops we set off to have a closer look at the location of the original lighthouse – the only remains now are the foundations of the lighthouse keepers cottage. Who knows how much longer they will be there as the wind and the ocean are eroding the coast rapidly. A quick visit to the local cemetery to see if we could find the resting places of a couple of relatives.
Port MacDonnell is famous for Rock Lobster – if the smell of the town is anything to go by we will be steering well clear of the lobster!!!!

Home for dinner, jammies, scattering some food outside for the reindeer and off to bed in great anticipation.

Merry Christmas to all and to all goodnight.

Day 5 - Portland to Mt Gambier

Jeanette made friends with 'Spida' Everitt who was camped 2 spots up from us this morning. He was off on a charity bike ride, his wife and son were in a very flash Jayco Motorhome. We packed up and were on the road around 10am... for a short journey of just over a hundred km's to Mt Gambier.

We took the scenic route via Nelson. The traffic was light, the weather warmed right up. The scenery was largely pine plantations... wood chips destined for export via Portland Harbour. A ship had been loading up on them while we were there. Soon after Nelson we had a photo stop at the border crossing... as you do.

The kids were travelling pretty well so we continued on and arrived in Mt Gambier in time to set up camp before lunch. By now it was very warm... We're staying at 'Pine Country' Caravan Park which is behind the famous Blue Lake. The place is on bore water and we were treated to some lovely lush green grass to camp on! They had sprinklers going nearby and Ethan and Gemma loved running through them and both ended up saturated. Quite a novelty for them... they've never seen a sprinkler before! Zac showed far more maturity, prefering to help set up the caravan with us!

The wind gusted during the afternoon becoming quite strong. We rolled up the awning to stop it flapping around. The temperature was in the high 30's. Despite this we managed to get the kids to have a sleep.

Later in the afternoon went and had a look at the Blue Lake... and yes, it was quite blue. Then we went to Umpherstone Sinkhole - a wonderful cascading garden in a big hole in the ground. Lots of dangling ivy, pink hydrangeas (?). We walked down into the hole and enjoyed some time there. Back out of the hole we found an old bulldozer and an old logging truck to climb all over... so we did just that.

After dinner we bathed and PJ'ed the kids and then set off to look for some Christmas lights. Found some great ones and got out of the car and walked around a bit. Ethan kept exclaiming 'Wow!' at each new house. It was a real highlight for both the boys especially. It was a very windy and balmy evening. Looking forward to a cool change due during the night.

Day 4 Portland

A nice lazy start to the day with all three kids sleeping in to a decent hour!! Yay. After breakfast outside again we headed off to the Portland Strawberry Farm. It was obviously a popular place as we were there soon after 10am and they had already sold out of punnets of strawberries – if you wanted any you had to pick them yourself. So we headed out to the strawberry fields armed with a plastic bucket and three excited children! Zac and Ethan got right into the swing of it eagerly pointing out the berries – Ethan frequently exclaiming “ I love it” Pretty soon they were finding good sized ripe berries and adding them to the bucket. Gemma on the other hand had a lovely time picking anything red she could get her hands on to and then eating it – she was soon strawberry coloured everywhere. Wondered if we would have to smuggle her out or pay for her by the kilo!.

We headed back to the van to wash our berries and pack for a picnic in the local botanical gardens. We enjoyed a lovely picnic under a large shady tree while listening to the oldies playing croquet. In the middle of the gardens is a croquet club!!

After arvo naps all the kids went bike riding around the block – with mum and dad looking at some lovely old homes in the area at the same time. Fish and chip dinner down by the waterfront, quick play in the park and home to start packing up camp ready to move on tomorrow.

No photos today as the internet is running incredibly slowly!

Day 3 - Portland

We spent the whole day exploring Portland - after a pretty good night. Even Gemma slept through to 4:30ish before stirring at all. Ethan must have been worn out, he slept 12 hours! Zac was up earlier than the other two and read books in our bed for awhile. He really got into his Christmas book which he says was about Mary and Joe Fish and baby Jesus!!! We began our day with breakfast outside and Jeanette did a couple of loads of washing... and we've only been gone 2 days!!!

Our first visit was to the Tram and Model Railway museum where we rode for an hour on one of the Portland Cable Trams - restored tram car pulled along by a replica trolley which is now powered by diesel not cable pulled. This was good as it was a beautiful day, blue sky, slight sea breeze keeping it at a great temperature. The ride took us along the waterfront and back again.

Next we visited the Tourist Info office and Maritime Display Centre. This was fun as we got to sit inside the belly of a large whale that washed up nearby in 1987. All that is left is the skeleton of course, but it still smells a bit off-ish! Also in this discovery centre there was a challenge to find various clues hidden in plastic bottles to solve a riddle. Zac and Ethan loved running around looking for these and we found them to get the message.

Lunch was back in the caravan followed by naps for all 3 kids. After dinner we walked around town, bought some ice-cream which we ate overlooking the port sitting on a terrific concrete couch that has been covered in mosaic tiles... pretty comfortable for a concrete couch! Very colourful too. We spent the rest of the evening in the playground down on the waterfront which was a lot of fun. Jeanette went down the big spirally slide and Darrin had fun on a spinning thing... so all 5 of us had fun!

It was nearly 9:30 by the time we got the kids bathed and to bed... we're all right into holiday mode now!

Day 2 - Camperdown to Portland

The boys slept beautifully last night... it may take a few days for Gemma to get used to being in the van again though! We packed up and fuelled up before spending about half an hour wandering the main street of Camperdown. The old clock tower chimed 10am when we arrived, much to the kids delight.

We continued west-ward and had lunch in Warnambool, down at the adventure park at Lake Pertobe. The motor boats were not operating because of too much weed build up in the lake, much to Zac and Ethan's disgust. All three of them had fun in the playground though.

Our next stop was Portland where we checked into the Claremont Holiday Village - right in the centre of town, a small but nice caravan park. We were the only van in - a couple of tents and some people in cabins meaning the kids have plenty of room to run free. We set up and the kids rode their bikes before we went for a walk down to the waterfront. A large cargo ship was in port and we sat and admired it from a mosaic and concrete 'couch' which afforded great views! On the way 'home' we popped into the supermarket.

After dinner we took the very scenic 13km drive to Cape Nelson. We saw over 20 huge wind turbines on the way, stopped at a lookout which stretched back along rugged cliffs towards Portland. The highlight was the Cape Nelson Lighthouse which was a great sight in the evening sunlight. We had a good walk around it and up to the cliff edges... remaining safely behind railings of course!

We look forward to exploring more of Portland tomorrow.

Day 1 - Home to Camperdown

We managed to get away at 12:15 this afternoon and got a good 2 1/2 hours down the road before we stopped - in Colac. All 3 kids slept and travelled really well. After a play and a snack at the park in central Colac we completed our journey in Camperdown.

We're staying a night at 'Lakes and Craters' Caravan Park which is 3 km's out of town and well off the highway. We are on top of an extinct volcano with views across lakes and flat grasslands. Next door is the small but nice Botanical Gardens. We enjoyed a nice walk through the gardens after dinner, the kids loving the large old gnarly trees! We also found some cows nearby and one friendly horse.

Our caravan site is under a wonderful old 'Turkey Elm' tree and we think this small council run caravan parks is terrific. The manager even had a bag of lollies for each of the kids which Santa dropped off a couple of days ago!

count down

6 days til we leave... have just activated the mobile broadband account... the family christmas party was yesterday, the kids think its christmas already as they have been spoilt with lots of great presents!!!