Penola to Port Fairy 15th Dec

We wondered why so many birds were interested in the grill of our car and then on closer inspection we realised they'd learnt that this was where they could pick up a meal of bugs and butterflies who'd flown in front of our car the day before.

Today was to be a bit of a drive from Penola to Port Fairy and the start of the Ocean Road. First stop was Mount Gambier, 22km south, a city sprawled on the slopes of an extinct volcano with the three craters now lakes. The one in the photo is unsurprisingly called 'blue lake'. It is 70m deep and turns cobalt blue from November to March when the sun's at its brightest. The rest of the year it's a much paler colour. We did a drive around the lake and a climb up a really, really, really short but steep hill to get to a look out where we could see all three craters.

Next we headed due south to the start of the coast. We went to look at the beach in Nelson and bought an ice-cream from the shop but there was little else to do there. Just before Nelson we crossed over the border between the states of South Australia and Victoria. There were no checkpoints or anything just a sign telling you you'd moved into a new state however this drive from one sign to the next moved us into a different time zone and we had to move our watches forward half an hour. This felt very strange as we'd only ever experienced time changes before when flying.

Deserted beach at Nelson

Before Port Fairy we drove through Portland but that's about all we did ….we just drove through.

When looking online lots of places in Port Fairy seemed booked up so we thought we ought to book ahead. Our B&B turned out to be the last house in the town which meant we had to drive to get into the centre. This was a bit frustrating when we saw lots of vacancy signs all over the place for B&Bs which would have been far more preferable to stay in.

Any how we off loaded our bags and headed in to town. We went to a cafe offering free wifi and had a latte and a flat white until the owner decided our 'free' wifi time had run out and rather subtly hinted we should maybe leave by placing the evening menu blackboard right in front of us ....fair enough, we certainly had made the coffees last a while.

We decided to get fish and chips for tea and with the claim on the sign that they were 'The best in Victoria State' how could we not?

The Port in Port Fairy

It was dusk by then but we thought we'd have enough time to walk the 45 minute loop around Griffith Island which was between Port Fairy and the ocean. This was a great walk past the sea and a lovely little lighthouse.

Griffith Island

The island also had its own inhabitants of swamp wallabies who we saw jumping around and eating. It turned out our timing was spot on as the wallabies are more active at dusk and aren't really seen during the day. However it also turned out our timing was spot on to see a flock of mutton-birds who come in to roost on the island from the ocean at dusk between September and April. We saw some birdwatchers waiting with binoculars to see the birds so we decided to wait as well and it was well worth it as when I describe them as a 'flock of birds' that is a complete understatement – there were 1,000s of them flying in at the same time and it was amazing how they all knew exactly where their nests were.

Muttonbirds

The final sighting for us that night was a swamp wallaby wading through the sea. We do not have good enough photographic evidence to prove it so you'll just have to trust us on that one !

Port Fairy by night