Day 6 & 7 – Rain, Hail Wind and 4WD

As you may have guessed there was no post yesterday. We left Cape Jervis to head for Robe and there was always a threat the weather was going to be bad. There are no photos of the trip down, well because we couldn’t really get out of the cars and even if we could you couldn’t see much.

 We battled gale force winds, hail stones, driving rain and spray from trucks. I must say even confronted by all that the BT 50 went well. We arrived at Robe about 4ish and in the 10 minutes between more showers, winds and hail we set up then hibernated for the night. The weather continued over night but we were snug and dry. The caravan park we are staying at sites between two lakes and the buildings are classified by the national trust. The office and reception building is the old stables and  is complete with the original pug and post flooring.

 Today the weather cleared a little but was still threatening but we ventured out. First stop was Robe and the “I” centre, a bit of a wander then a planning coffee. The “I” centre had a museum attached and chronicled the early history of Robe, which apparently was the dropping off point for many of the Chinese destined for the gold fields in Victoria. There were a couple of stories, one in which 260 odd Chinese left Robe for Bendigo only 16 made it. At one point there were approx 17000 Chinese in Robe. We decide to chance the weather and went back to make lunch and head for Cape Jaffa. We had a bit of a poke around and it’s a bit interesting. It looks a bit like their trying to create some sort of up market living. They have created a series of canals which have subdivided land fronting them so each property has a jetty etc. Not too many houses at the moment and I’m not sure how it will go Robe is sort of half way between nowhere and somewhere else. We managed to get the 4by’s on the beach for a short trip which gave Gaz a bit of a taste for beach driving. 

The light house has been removed and has been restored and sits in Kingston SE. Lunch was had amongst the dunes and was pleasant except for the wind. We packed up and headed for Kingston SE. There were 2 priorities 1) to see the restored lighthouse and 2) to visit the scrapbooking shop. We managed both with most of the time allocated to the scrapbooking shop – they had a sale on. From there we headed north again to a place called the granites which are a few gigantic granite rocks somehow thrown into the sea. A receding tide, however, had not receded enough to see them in their full finery. Ah well another beach drive made it worth while. On leaving Granite rocks we found a dirt road heading north which ended up going between the beach and the lower reaches of the Coorong. It went for about 40 kms and was interesting. The water in the swamp parts going from a pink colour through grey to brown and the vegetation changed all the time. It was pleasant and worthwhile drive and gave Gaz the opportunity to get his car a bit dirtier. Di keeps saying boys and their toys. We came back on the highway about 60kms north of Kingston SE so the drive back was quite uneventfully or exciting, except for the wind and the rain which have reappeared.