Great Ocean Road - Day 2 Robe to Port Fairy PM

Our next stop was Mount Gambier, just on the border with Victoria and as I mentioned before SA's second largest town with a population of 30,000.  The main attractions here were :

The Blue Lake, which was indeed very blue but it seemed you could only view it from above and there was no access to walk around it which was a shame.  

Umpherston Sinkhole which is now a beautiful sunken garden, was once a cave formed through the dissolution of limestone and the sinkhole was created when the top of the chamber collapsed downwards.  Back in 1886, local farmer James Umpherston took it upon himself to beautify the gaping hole and began to plant vegetation here. 

It really was quite amazing how the garden had been created.  Then sharp eyed Ian spotted this little possum scrambling around - this is just a grab shot.

From there we drove across the border in Victoria where there were signs telling us not to carry fruit, seeds and numerous other things across.  Firstly it was mainly arable and livestock farming.

I loved this cow with attitude.

Then we drove through a huge conifer plantation which had been severely damaged by the recent fires (there were road closure signs all over the place).  I would have liked to get out and explore a bit and take some more in-depth photos, but it somehow didn't feel right.

It's amazing how the fire seems to jump across the road, the grass was completely untouched yet the trees either side were burnt to a crisp.

Next stop was Portland which had sounded a lovely little town.  We stopped at the Tourist Information and were given a suggested walk around town taking in the botanical gardens.  But it was all a bit naff so we didn't spend too long there.

After settling into our motel at Port Fairy we headed to the Tower Hill Reserve for sunset as we'd read it was a good place to see both koala and kangaroo.  Created out of an old volcano it provided a lovely setting but unfortunately the only kangaroo we saw were right on the path and my camera was in the boot!  To give them their due, they did stop and pose for an incredibly long time, but I was just too slow.  We spoke to some Germans walking around and they pointed out koala in the distant trees but to be honest I think they were hallucinating.  But we did see

Australian Magpie, about 3 times the size of our magpies and a danger to cyclists apparently.

Bird (as yet unidentified)

Red Wallaby

Emu (out of focus)

This is the nearest we got to seeing a koala, we'd been told their poo looked like a Liquorice Bullet (an Aussie sweet apparently, so we were none the wiser) but as soon as we saw this we knew exactly what it was.

All in all a bit of a disappointment, we were both feeling very tired so we headed back to the motel for yet another early night.