Tuesday Aug. 17.….Whales, Blue Lake, Sinkholes and Waterfalls

Today it was sunny and warm all day, everyone has been talking about the flooding and the wind and the rain…..I guess we have been really lucky the last couple of days….a few raindrops yesterday but today just great.

After we had breakfast, found a place where Lori could get her phone activated and found a cache, we headed off to the Whale Nursery.http://www.warrnamboolcam.com/whales.htm        It seems that the Southern Right Whales come to Warrnambool at this time of the year to give birth.  It is so popular that they have made a large viewing area.  It seems impossible to think that they could give birth in such turbulent surf.  We caught a sight of them just laying in the water just off shore.  We understand that sometimes they will put on quite a show…..swimming, playing and breaching, today they were resting.   http://www.warrnambool.vic.gov.au/index.php?q=node/56

Where's the Whale?

 

Whale Watching

We found the second cache a ways up the coast at the grave of the first white woman in Victoria (1860) looking out over surfers at play!  Then we were off…heading to Mt Gambier in South Australia about 200 km.  We left the shoreline and passed through countryside with lots and lots of sheep and cattle, wind farms and tree farms…..so many different environments…..at some point Lori said that if someone showed her a picture of some of the areas she would have said it was Ireland.  Everything is so green right now.  The last time I was here it was summertime and everything was golden.  

We arrived in Mt Gambier to get a little taste of South Australia (yes, yes, yes….alright, it involves caching!)   We first went to the Blue Lake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Lake_%28South_Australia%29     (an earth cache)…..high above Mt Gambier. …..it is one of four crater lakes in the town but it is the only lake in the whole world that changes from a brilliant blue each summer through to a cold grey colour in the winter.  Today it was not the beautiful blue throughout the lake that I saw two years ago but it is a bright turquoise around the edge.  We had some lunch at one of the other lakes in the park, in an area called “Devil’s Bowl,“ found a couple of caches then headed to another earth cache that is my favourite…..the Umpherston Sinkhole http://www.southaustralia.com/info.aspx?id=9000800  

Blue Lake, Mt Gambier

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The Umpherston Sinkhole is a garden made from a  sinkhole in 1887.….When I was here in 2011 it was summer and all the flowers were blooming….but even in winter it is still an amazing place to visit

 

From Mt Gambier we headed  east, back in to the state of Victoria stopping off at a Wannon Falls in a nice little park with camping and picnicking facilities.  Another earth cache and two other caches.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannon_Falls

By this time it was 5:00  so we headed to the nearest town……Hamilton (!) we got a hotel room, found another cache, had dinner.  Lori has been logging her caches (12) and I have been blogging …..still have to log my caches (11).