The Israels Australian Adventure

This April when we were in Scotland visiting our dear friends - the Rushforths - we met Ian and Christine who happened to be eating at the same restaurant as us one evening.  We got chatting as you do when you are the only ones there and to cut a long story short we exchanged details as they were from Deniliquin and invited us to drop by when we were there later in the year.   So we had already contacted them and were invited for lunch on Thursday, 7th December.  Hence our needing to get to Mildura after the airport to allow us time to get down there the next morning.   We arrived just after 1.30 pm and Christine had made us the "best" sandwiches we had in our whole time in Australia!  Ian is an earth mover amongst other things and has his own business so was not home from his current job which is 300 km away but wasn't far behind us.  They felt there wasn't much to show us in Deniliquin but they agreed to pick us up about 5pm and would show us ar...

It poured hard all the way to Adelaide, which was such a shame as we passed and stopped in some lovely towns, such as Meningie which had a beautiful lake, Tailem Bend and Bel Air.  Boy was the latter very similar to its name sake - huge houses.  We found a lovely pricey coffee shop there - yum. We love Adelaide.  The city makes sense.  It has wide streets, lovely parks and everything is easily accessible.  For a city - you can breath.  Nat and Maddie's plane was delayed from Brisbane so that gave us time to go straight to Frome Apartments (where we are staying for the 5 days) and get our card to access the parking garage.  Our first excursion was going to be visiting Ebenezer Night Market.  When we had researched this it said 11-4am which is why we chose Frome Apartments as we didn't want to be wandering the streets of Adelaide late into the night.   When it came to going it turned out they were from 5.30pm till 10.30pm so that was easy....

 As it was such a nice morning when we left Mount Gambier we decided to go down to the coast and see Carpenter Rocks, Canunda National Park and Cape Banks Lighthouse as just below the lighthouse is the Pisces Star Shipwreck. Castle Rocks Castle Rocks was a lovely small town with a sheltered cove.  There was only 1 Yute in the car park waiting for the lobster/crab boat that was coming in.  It was interesting watching them load their pots from the bigger boat into a smaller one to bring them ashore. Canunda National Park Pisces Star Shipwreck Unfortunately it wasn't low tide when we arrived and so you could only see some of the shipwreck sticking out of the water.  We decided not to go down and have a look.   Cape Banks Lighthouse We were so glad we came down because as we were looking out from the lookout at the lighthouse, a seal swam past.  David even walked down to the beach for that and got soaking wet feet but didn't care.  It turned out there...

Today we will be in South Australia.  We woke early and arrived in Mount Gambier by 9am just as the tourist information office opened.  We made one stop at Nelson to see the Glenelg River.  For some reason I (Karen) could not warm up this morning so it was a very quick visit. The lady in the tourist office was really helpful with information on what was best to see.  Two of the caves we wanted to see, one was out of town and best seen tomorrow as we drive to Robe and the other has been closed since COVID.  She also gave us some good information on travelling through Adelaide when we pick Nat and Maddie up from the airport on Saturday, so really useful visit. For those who don't know Mount Gambier is the second largest city in South Australia and sits exactly halfway between Adelaide and Melbourne but its unique geological features which make it so special and why we really wanted to come here. One thing I love about Victoria and South Australia is I can name a l...