Day 15 and the last day of photos from our trip. We left Melbourne and headed for Ballarat with a view to spending some hours there before heading off to Bendigo. Drizzly rain in Ballarat hampered our sightseeing, but we did spend some time in the famous Lydiard St and had lunch by Lake Wendouree before travelling to Bendigo and having a look around there.
Day 14 was spent in Melbourne - wandering around South Yarra and the Yarra River with views of AAMI Park and the MCG.
Day 12 was rainy and grey and so the few photos taken that day aren’t worthy of broadcast.
Day 13 was spent heading south from Melbourne to Brighton then on to the Mornington Peninsula.
Day 11 began in Port Campbell and finished in Melbourne. The highlights along the way were the Loch Ard Gorge, the Twelve Apostles, and the sheer pleasure of driving (or being a passenger) along the Great Ocean Road.
Loch Ard Gorge was named after a shipwreck in 1878. Of the 54 souls on board only two survived. I believe the ship ran agroud on the rock shelf on the far left hand side of photo eight, below.
Day 10 saw us traversing the first quarter of the Great Ocean Road to Port Campbell. We began with an early morning visit to the Umpherston Sinkhole followed by visits to the Bay of Islands, Bay of Martyrs, The Grotto and London Bridge before arriving in Port Campbell for the afternoon and evening.
Day 10 began in Mt Gambier and saw us traverse the first quarter of the Great Ocean Road to Port Campbell. In Mt Gambier we began with a walk into the Umpherston Sinkhole before stopping to view the Bay of Islands, Bay of Martyrs, The Grotto and London Bridge before arriving in Port Campbell for the afternoon/evening.
For day 8 we decided to take a trip west to Glenelg (about 10-15km west of Adelaide) on the Gulf of St Vincent. We then headed south and visited the piers
at both Brighton and Port Noarlunga.
Day 7 was spent in Adelaide - looking at some of the street art (for example), walking along Rundle Mall, photographing buildings, visiting the Art Gallery and finishing with a quick tour of parts of the Botanic Gardens.
On Day 6 we left the Barossa and drove through the beautiful Eden Valley to the interesting-but-touristy Hahndorf, stopped at the Mt Lofty Summit and eventually descended into Adelaide.
Day 5 - Driving from Broken Hill to the Barossa via Yunta. Much of the first half of the 450+ km was through fairly desolate terrain. Rain threatened much of the way but yielded interesting cloud formations and variable light as evidenced below:
Day 4 saw us travelling to Silverton and the Mundi Mundi lookout some 25 to 30 km from Broken Hill.
Four views from Mundi Mundi
Day 3 was our first full day in Broken Hill. We began with a trip out to the Living Desert sculptures and later that day spent some time at the Line of Lode memorial.
The air in and around Broken Hill was so clear and clean. And the view of Broken Hill from the memorial was excellent.
Day 2 saw us leave Nyngan behind and continue west - aiming for Broken Hill.
Our first port of call was Cobar, then a few stops in the middle of nowhere before having lunch in Wilcannia and arriving in Broken Hill mid-afternoon.
The countryside is sparse but beautiful. We saw the odd emu but they were vastly outnumbered by goats–hundreds of them grazing at the roadside, but too clever to become roadkill (not that we were trying!) The goats seems to be in flocks of four or five to ten and there were literally dozens of flocks spread out across hundreds of kilometres.
My wife and I recently completed a holiday/road trip starting on the mid coast of NSW through the central and far west of NSW, into the primary wine making districts of South Australia and Adelaide then south east through Mt Gambier and along the Great Ocean Road to Melbourne before returning through central Victoria.
Our first port of call was Nyngan. One of Nyngan’s claims to fame is The Big Bogan1. He’s probably close to 6 metres tall. And here he is in his glorious boganness or boganinity: