THURSDAY 29 JANUARY     NELSON

Quiet caravan parks are not conducive to waking up early, it seems! It was 9.30 before I stirred.

The weather had changed during the night and it had rained and was quite cool, with gusty squalls still happening.

I abandoned the idea of riding to the store, after breakfast, for bread and a paper, due to the continuing rain.

Our drive to the store turned instead into a trip to Mt Gambier, across the border in SA, because John wanted to check out bowls there! I drove for most of the way because John wanted to fiddle about and see if he could get the HF radio working properly – he has to learn to use all its functions, yet.

First stop was at the Tourist Information Centre – the Lady Nelson Centre, where there was, at the front, a full-sized replica of the ship of that name. The Lady Nelson was the first ship to sail through Bass Strait, pioneering the route for subsequent shipping. On that first voyage, her captain sighted in the distance and named Mt Schank and Mt Gambier.

The Information Centre was excellent. Apart from some free tourist brochures, I bought a couple of postcards and three  books that describe roadside stops and camps around Australia. These cost $36 but should be worth having.

John found out that there are two bowls clubs in town. We drove to the nearest one – the RSL Club – where he booked us in for a Triples game on Sunday afternoon. I waited in the Truck – could hear a lot of sirens in the distance and wondered what was going on.

We drove to the town centre to get bread for lunch. The sirens I’d heard were due to a seven car pile-up in the middle of the main street. It was hard to work out how such an accident happened, but it was a real mess. Some bystanders seemed to think that the first driver had some sort of “turn”, jammed the accelerator down and hit some other cars, which hit others.

Bought bread rolls, to be eaten without fillings, at a small bakery that did not have much choice, then drove up to the Blue Lake to a lookout, where we ate, sitting in Truck. We did a small walk on tracks around the lookout area. The Blue Lake was very blue!

Mount Gambier itself is a volcanic feature, containing four maar formation lakes – created by explosions of hot steam during the most recent volcanic phase. The Blue Lake is the largest and deepest of the lakes, the next biggest is Valley Lake. The other two are more like shallow swampy areas.

The Blue Lake is known for changing colour between bright blue in the summer, to a more normal grey colour in winter. The colour change relates to changing water temperature – in summer, calcium carbonate crystals precipitate out of solution and refract light rays differently.

We drove down into the part of the crater that contains Valley Lake, past the Blue Lake Caravan Park, which looks a good one. We did not stop long there, or do any walking.

Port McDonnell was John’s  next destination – because it has a bowls club! The road passes close by Mt Schank. There was no activity or information at the bowls club, and the village looked rather desolate and windblown. We were not tempted to get out of the Truck and walk around.

Followed a road along the coast for some way, through farmland, and that eventually led us back to the main road to Nelson.

It was 7pm when we got back to the van. Not bad for a trip to the local shop for the paper!

So tea was late – salads, followed by mango.

There had obviously been quite a lot of rain at Nelson, through the day. Fortunately, the sandy coastal soils seem to drain quite well.

We saw a number of “new” birds today – some in the sense that it was the first time we recorded them in our bird book, although we had seen them in times past. But there were some we had not ever seen before – particularly the Cape Barren Goose.