Despite having felt so dreadful
last night and having barely an hour or so sleep, I felt surprisingly bright this morning and well
capable to doing the long drive, which is just as well as Ian wasn’t too good
at all. It’s amazing how we subconsciously
take it in turns.
Breakfast was included in the
room rate and the lovely lady on the egg station cooked me two fried yokes just
how I like them and poached for Ian.
Suitably fortified we met David (the chauffeur) at 08:30 as arranged and
he drove us to Hertz Rental in North Terrace to pick up the car. It’s a very nice Mitsubishi ASK automatic,
similar in size to our Qashqai at home. We quickly completed the paperwork and would have hit the road, except the
phone SIM still hadn’t activated.
We left all our bags safely locked in
the car in the Hertz compound and hung around until the Telstra shop opened at 09:00 where the technician
refused to deal with us as we didn’t have our passports with us (in the
car). I had a complete meltdown and
pointed out that the two guys who’d served us yesterday were sitting in the
corner and could no doubt vouch for who we were. A lot of teeth sucking and checking with the
manager went on, but eventually they agreed to deal with us, although declared the
problem was a known network issue and we’d need to speak with Telstra over the
phone. There then followed a ludicrous
half hour where the guys in the shop told us what to say to the person on the
phone and the person on the phone told us what to say to the shop staff - they were not
allowed to talk directly on our behalf, even though I offered to adopt one of
them. The phone side insisted it was a
corrupt SIM and the shop insisted it was a network problem. I explained I was a visitor in their country,
wholly reliant upon them and about to drive through a fire danger area and
therefore would NOT leave the shop until I had a working phone. Eventually someone tried a new SIM and guess
what – it worked!!!
Rather cross at the wasted hour
but relieved to have a working phone we headed off to Robe for our first night. About 335 kms away and a 4 hour drive without stops. But the first stop was the Pink Lake at Meningie, although not particularly pink on a grey day like today.
I loved the non specific nature of this sign "Caution ←Cable in this Vicinity →"
We then drove on and into the little town of Meningie and stopped at the bakery which is famous for its pies. All we wanted again though was a simple sandwich; cheese salad made to order and luckily we were able to stop her before she added in gerkins, onions and beetroot. We sat next to Lake Albert and ate the lunch which was lovely, all the while watching the Little Corellas.
Suddenly an egret shot out of the reeds, but b*gger I clipped his tail.
White birds against a flat white sky - not an ideal combination!
A few miles out of town we came across another lake and this time it was vaguely pink.
Next stop was in Kingston for the famous Big Lobster - immortalised in Bill Bryson's Down Under. We're driving more or less the same route as he did.
Built in 1979 it stands almost 60ft high and is made of fibreglass over a steel frame - very impressive too. This time the red arrow points to Ian, not a kangaroo, included for scale.
The soil in this region is very lime rich (just like the Boxley Valley) and there are numerous wine growers in the area. Whereas in France you go to "caves" to taste/buy wine, here they are described as cellar doors. We visited the Cape Jaffa cellar door where Ian tasted 6 wines (I had just the one small tasting as I was driving) and then we bought 6 bottles of the one he liked best.
Unfortunately it wasn't possible to walk around the vineyards or the production areas, so very little to photograph.
