Month: December 2011

Road Trip: Adelaide – Melbourne. Day 2.

It is not so important what happened each day of our trip, but it is easier to remember and write about it day by day.
So, the first night was… freezing (naive us – we had no idea that it can be worse).

Even avocetes were freezing in the morning.

I always wanted to have a picture with huge creatures and objects like this. Like in American movies. You can imagine how we all shouted and break when we saw this lobster!

We also stopped to take pictures of much smaller creatures.

One batman (a scientist who is interested in bats) told us about Naracoorte caves. On our way we passed few little towns with signs saying something like “The Tidiest town of Australia 1993”. But we didn’t see any person there. Actually in Australia you can feel lonely or just alone almost all the time. Not so many cars in roads. Empty little towns. No people in trails. Not so many people live in Australia. And probably most of them just stay at home and watch TV. That would be the easiest explanation about emptiness everywhere.

OK, Naracoorte. They found some fossils in caves here. Seems like giant creatures used to live in Australia many many years ago. Like this giant wombat (it’s a real size sculpture!)  – what a beast!

Claustrophobic feeling – a little cave for museum visitors.

This is one of my favourites – a stylised creature from stone age or something.

Plush koala-kangaroo and some other creature.

In the cave.

It is still pretty cool. Even honeyeater seems like feeling cold.

As soon as we stopped to take pics of this one, I didn’t see none of them: Reda, Laurius and mr. Egret.

Mount Gambier – town with the blue lake. Very very blue.

So blue!
We stayed in a nice expensive camping where we had hot shower, a little kitchen where we could get warm. And crows were making funny noise.

Road Trip: Adelaide – Melbourne. Day 1.

It’s been quite a while after our first longer road trip in Australia, but just couldn’t start writing about it. We were too busy, and quite lazy. But finally here’s the first post.

So, the first road trip from Adelaide to Melbourne and back.

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Here’s our route. We drove along the coast to Melbourne and inland back to Adelaide. We did about 2000 km, but it’s just basically nothing on the map. You just drive and drive…

Little details and impressions from Luka’s notebook. It was drawn while going on the highway. We pass only a couple of cars, asphalt is old and very noisy. There’s a gap in doors and the wind is making a terrible noise. We jammed it with the only thing we could reach in the mess inside the car – a couple of socks. It’s inevitable when you pack 3 quite tall people and their things in the little, nearly adult Corolla.
Despite the car was already full, we saw a garage sale and went there. We had to show it to Reda, our joy and the inexhaustible source of junk. A pile of books, a bowl, a backpack and a big set of pencils, stamps and markers were tucked where ever it was possible. On the side road a guy with stylish hat was playing a guitar and selling mangoes. Oh yes, it’s the season of perfect mangoes now! All happy we left the city. Bought coffee for Reda in the little town, and some cookies, with too mush of soda. The baker must have been in love 🙂

We crossed the river by ferry. The river is like a road – with road, well, river signs.

We posed at the salt lake. It was a really strange feeling, if you were walking on the thin ice. But the sun was burning and everything was pink.

The snow of salt.

We didn’t go very far on our first day. We stopped at Coorong National Park – the place where a lot of birds live. However, we were not very lucky, as it was terrible windy there.

Laurius with the sand dunes and lagoon in the background.

It was really lots of birds there, just very far away. Black Swans.

And who knows what other birds. We put our tent under the bush where little Willie had his nest in. So, as you can expect, he or she wasn’t very happy. The wind wasn’t going down in the evening, so we just hid in the tent. There were only old people with there trailers resting around. But the funniest part is, that the toilet is about 2 km away from the campsite. You can never understand Australians 🙂