Right when I was starting to feel proud of myself for staying on top of things, it became harder and harder to blog as we continued on our road trip! Best to pick up where I left off and talk about the second stage of our adventure from the Great Ocean Road to Melrose, South Australia.

Day 8

After enjoying a beautiful wake-up in Port Fairy, we hit the road again and drove for just under 2 hours to the small city of Mount Gambier. It is geographically half way between Melbourne and Adelaide and was a great place for us to stop and break up the drive from the Great Ocean Road to the rest of South Australia.

Mount Gambier actually has quite a few tourist attractions, so we visited a few while we were waiting for our motel check-in time. This was the first motel we had booked of the trip, and we were very excited to not sleep in a tent for a night, especially after being in jam-packed and loud campgrounds on the Great Ocean Road.

First, we visited the Blue Lake, formed from a sinkhole and filled with beautiful blue water, which is also the city’s drinking supply. It was a very beautiful blue colour and reminded me of Crater Lake in Oregon. We enjoyed a walk around the lake, admiring the deep blue colour.

Next, we visited the Umpherston Sinkhole, located in the centre of town. This sinkhole is filled with a beautiful garden where you can descend down the steps and see everything up close. This was a great attraction and it was exciting to see a natural feature filled with such beautiful greenery.

We didn’t get up to much the rest of the day, as some big rains and a thunderstorm rolled in right after we arrived at our motel. The recharge was definitely needed, and we were grateful to be able to catch up on sleep away from the loud campsites of the trip so far.

Day 9

We had a longer drive on Day 9, which ended up being almost 5 hours to get us from Mount Gambier to McLaren Vale. While the majority of the drive wasn’t particularly exciting, we encountered a huge rain storm that made for some pretty scary conditions. We were happy to arrive to the clouds clearing as we arrived in McLaren Vale.

McLaren Vale is one of the many wine regions in South Australia, located about 30 minutes south of Adelaide. It has beautiful vineyards and seems like a great place to visit for the weekend if you’re in the area, or on a long road trip like us! Now that we have finished our road trip, we can now say that it is definitely one of our favourite places that we have been to in Australia.

Since we had such a long driving day, we didn’t get up to much on our first day besides the logistics of setting up camp. We loved this campsite, called McLaren Vale Lakeside Caravan Park, and would recommend it to anyone! It was beautiful, had excellent access to the town and wineries, and had fantastic tent spots on grass under the trees away from the busy-ness of the caravan sites. It turns out I have a lot to say about the different campsites we have stayed at in Australia, so will spend more time discussing this topic in a separate post.

Day 10

We spent Day 10 exploring some of the food and drink options offered in McLaren Vale.

First, we treated ourselves to a delicious lunch at a restaurant called Pizzateca, which we learned about from a wine country magazine showcasing McLaren Vale. We both love pizza, but George REALLY loves it, and after looking at reviews we decided that this was some pizza that we had to try. The restaurant was only open for lunch on the day we visited and closed for the rest of our time in McLaren Vale, so we were lucky to even get a reservation. The pizza at Pizzateca was the best pizza we have ever had. The restaurant was absolutely packed for a Monday at noon, and after trying the pizza, we could understand why!

Next, we visited the Hastwell and Lightfoot winery to do some wine tasting. We were excited for this portion of the trip as we had really enjoyed the wine tasting in Rutherglen, Victoria during the first part of our road trip.

The wines were delicious, and we ended up leaving with a bottle of cleanskin wine, which we were delighted to learn about. Cleanskin wine is created when a winery overproduces a certain type of wine and wants to sell off the excess while preserving the value of their wine. You can buy cleanskins directly from wineries, or can get mystery bottles at the liquor store. They have their own label, so you know what type of wine you are buying but nothing else. We have only had good experiences with them, and a little mystery makes it fun!

Day 11

We headed to more wineries on Day 11 – we were very conscientious in spacing out our tasting room visits so we could enjoy the wine without feeling out of sorts after.

First, we headed to Alpha Box and Dice, which is one of our favourite wineries in Australia so far. It had such a cool, artsy vibe, and the person who was in charge of our tasting was lovely and approachable. The winery also had a great story and setup, with each wine having a connection to a different letter of the alphabet.

Next, we went to Maxwell Wines, which was a much bigger winery operation but had some delicious wines and a beautiful view from the tasting room. There was also a hedge maze on site which we had a lot of fun exploring.

Day 12

We were sad to pack up our site in McLaren Vale and leave such a wonderful, beautiful place, but were also excited to move on to our next adventure. We were headed to the semi-outback town of Melrose for a night in a cottage on our way to the more-distant Eyre Peninsula.

Right before we left for our road trip, George learned that his bank information had been compromised, and we were lucky that it worked out for him to pick up his new card in Adelaide as we passed through. Besides the one stop, we didn’t see much of Adelaide beyond what we saw from the car. Given our situation with all of our belongings in our car, we determined that we wanted to save Adelaide for another time. We did enjoy what we saw, though, and looks like a fantastic city.

On our way up to Melrose, the “sightseeing” mostly involved red dirt lining the highway for most of the drive. After a couple of hours of driving, though, we were excited to see a pink lake in the distance – our first that we saw in Australia!

This Lake is called Lake Bambunga, and is located just off the highway in between Adelaide and Melrose. It looked really pink in person, but I had to play a bit with postproduction to really do it justice in the photo I have added. Surrounding and in the lake is large amount of salt, which bacteria and algae feed on and then produce the pink colour. It was beautiful, and we saw many other smaller pink lakes for the rest of the drive up to Melrose and into the Eyre Peninsula.

Melrose is an old town with an outback feel, and is the oldest town in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. It is a small town located at the base of Mount Remarkable, a giant red mountain that provides some very nice backdrop scenery. We have heard it is also excellent for mountain biking. In Melrose, we stayed in an Airbnb cabin that used to be a house for a local coffin maker back in the day. It was fun to stay somewhere so historic and the cabin itself was cute.

For dinner that night, we headed to the local pub in town as it is known for their schnitzels. George had a chicken parmigiana schnitzel, which is pretty standard Australian, while I had a kangaroo schnitzel, which was tasty and fun to try. The pub had a true outback feel with amazing decorations and ambience.

Next: Eyre Peninsula (Coffin Bay and Port Lincoln)

Our next portion of our trip took us down south again to the Eyre Peninsula, one of the more southern portions of South Australia. Stories of emus, oyster farms, and interesting rock formations will be posted in the days to come!