Blogging started early for me, trying to catch up after crashing trying to do it last night. Dana dealing with jet lag that woke her up at 2 and wouldn’t let her get back to sleep.
We ventured out for breakfast at about 7:30. The Seacombe House’s colors looked good in the morning sun.
It was established in 1847 as The Stag Inn by a sea captain who had ship wrecked nearby and decided to stick around, and it has undergone a lot of ownership and purpose changes over many years.
We found the main street still asleep except for one little coffee place, in a doorway essentially, serving people waiting on the sidewalk. We ordered coffees and some almond croissants. I noticed people now sitting at tables outside another cafe nearby that we had walked past early when it was closed, and so we went there and sat at a table. To justify our usurpation I ordered a salmon and cream cheese omelet and a yogurt, muesli, and fruit cup for Dana. The waitress ok’d it but had us pour our coffee into their cups, to not advertise competitors. Generally speaking I think that south Australia is one of the least anal Anglo places I’ve ever visited.
We packed up our stuff and drove a few blocks to a parking area near a bridge to Griffiths Island, where a lot of people were doing early morning exercise walks, many of them with kids in strollers. I liked the lighting…
and the bird life, although the migrating Shearwaters that gather here by the thousands were not around. There were a lot of other birds that were tough to photo, but I did get a clip of this little thing that my Merlin app says is a white-faced heron.
On the road, our first stop was in Portland, where we visited a nice local history maritime museum, the highlight for me being to feel real whale baleen (had the texture of toe nails). The hostesses said they often have visitors ask where the Japanese Garden is – mistaking the place for Portland, Oregon.
Next stop was Mount Gambier, which, to my surprise was not a real mountain but rather the name of a city that contains an extinct volcano caldera filled with pure water that turns a stunning blue in November and then greys over the following months. It was still a little blue when we saw it.
The town is famous for another geological feature, the Umpherston Sinkhole, which has been converted into a surprisingly pleasing garden…
with hydrangeas being the seasonal bloom.
We pushed on to Millicent for a quickie tour of its impressive local and regional history museum. We liked the carriage collection…
especially this hearse…
and the formal dress collection.
We drove on for quite a while – our longest travel day so far – giving me the time and incentive to figure out how to use the cruise control, turn off an annoying lane warning beep, correct the low beam light angle, and set up my new smart phone holder on the dash for GPS navigation.
We finally got to Robe (one syllable, like the garment) – and found the Robe House, our lodging for the night. Also historical, it was the first substantial house in Robe, built in 1847 of local sandstone, with floors of lime ash, and it served as the home of the governor resident. Like many of the South Australia historic buildings we’ve seen, it is one story, low to the ground – not that impressive outside but well-preserved and presented inside for contemporary B and B clients.
And it has excellent wifi and even an Apple Homepod that we have yet to figure out. I thought I had it when I told Siri to play Hound Dog and it did, but soon discovered that that was coming from my iPad.
We had a quick dinner at Olive’s, one of the many good local restaurants, and returned to our historic pad to fight off sleep as long as we could – me lasting a bit longer in a dogged effort to finish this blog, which I just did.
Dana and Roger Travels 