22/9/07-Driving
Well after a long day of driving (4½ hrs) with of course a few stops along the way, we are all very exhausted and tired. We finally arrived at Mount Gambier at 6.00pm, although because we crossed the boarder from Vic to SA, we had to wind the time back 30mins, so we really got there at 5.30pm. The place we are staying at is called Blue Lake Holiday Park and so far it’s looking pretty good-there’s a games room, tennis court, pool, playground and heaps of space to play around. We didn’t really do much for tea (since no-one could be bothered) so we just had 2min noodles and toast.
23/9/07-Blue Lakes and Sinkholes
So we are settled in at Blue Lake Holiday Park. This morning Sean and I went for a walk around the place to check it out, then had a game of pool, a game of tennis and kicked the soccer ball around. Then we all went for a walk along the top of the Blue Lake which is 3.6kms and took us about 45mins, Blue Lake sits in the crater of an extinct volcano, so we were walking along the rim and saw how Mount Gambier is built down the sides of the volcano and spread out from the base. After lunch we drove around town until we got to the Visitors Information Centre. That’s where we went on a ‘self guided tour’ and saw fossils that they found all around the Mount Gambier area because millions of years ago it was all under the ocean. Next we went over to some ‘sinkholes’ to see what they looked like. Sinkholes are just big holes in the ground that are formed when the roof of underground caves has caved in. Finally went to Valley Lake which is in another extinct volcano, right next to Blue Lake. We walked a steep track up to Centenary Tower to get a great view of Mount Gambier and the lakes. We had Chili Con Carne for tea and it was nice.
24/9/07-Caves and Wineries
First we got ready to go out driving for a few hrs, then we went out to another sinkhole but instead of just looking at it this time we actually went down it into some caves. Engelbrecht Caves is what they called them; we got to see all the rock formations and the ‘solution tubes’, they are sort of like air holes that are formed in a very strange way: they grow from the bottom (meaning the top of the cave) up to the surface, and they grow in a very round circular shape so if you stand directly under them you’ll see all the way up to the top of it. The leader who took us through the caves told us that a lot of diving experts come down and do some cave diving, as there is a lot of water underground in these caves. He told us that the water temperature down there was 12 degrees Celsius. Although the water looked still he said it was actually moving, very, very slow; and he also explained how the water was heading out to the ocean (28kms away) and will finally get there in 500years time! Mum and I worked out that the water was going 6millimetres per hour!! (you can check our calculations if you like! 
)
Next stop was Bool Lagoon, it was supposed to be a wetlands with a whole lot of birds flying around… but the ‘wetlands’ was all dry, and there were no birds at all, but then when we were driving back to the highway we found water and birds, so we stopped an had a look for a bit. A few kms down the road we got to the Naracoorte Caves National Park. There we went to two caves, The Wet Caves and Alexander Caves. The first, Alexander Caves, we were guided down them. These caves were more interesting since they had different styles of stalagmites and stalactites growing all over the caves. We even saw a few columns (when stalagmites and stalactites join together). At the bottom of the caves (when we couldn’t walk any further) we had a look at some fossils, but I was kind of getting a bit bored and was losing interest in everything by then. I couldn’t wait until we got out back on the road; it was just driving the whole way back to Mount Gambier. There were a few stops at wineries but I just stayed in the car playing on the laptop while the others went to taste wines.
Tonight was an interesting night; we went out for dinner to a place that had good food and a Play station1, that wasn’t bad. Before we went back to our cabin we went to one of the sinkholes to feed the possums.
Wine, Wine…did someone say wine?
Sounds like I should have been there instead of you, Leo???
Hi Leo
Did you survive the drive? Sounds like a long one. What did you think of the
Sea Lions? You have some awesome photos there. It looks like you enjoyed
the big rocks.
Looks like you enjoyed Kangaroo Island and surronds,
CYA,
Tim
Hi Tim,
Well we survived alright, just sometimes we got a bit bored in the car (me and Sean that is). But there were ways to entertain ourselves: listening to my disc-man, going to sleep if I was tired, staring out the window (not that that’s entertaining but it’s something).
I reckon the sea lions were pretty cool, they looked lazy as well. I actually never thought there would be such things as ‘Sea Lions’, they look exactly the same as seals but are just a different color.
It was pretty quiet at Kangaroo Island, not much traffic at all, I loved feeding the walabies when they came out at night.
Nice to hear from you,
Cya,
Leo