Day 25 – 26. Our next stop was Mt Gambier, only about 90 mins up the road from Warrnambool.  We were catching up with my old Uni mate, Adam Carpenter and his wife Lisa and weren’t due in till 4:30pm so it was a relaxed pack up and a stop at Towers Hill National Park for a picnic lunch, some easy half hour walks and a quick geocache find. There were a few tour groups pulling up for lunch also.  We overheard the ‘Bushman’ tour guide asking his group “what is the quickest way to spot a koala?”  Answer: “look for the tree with all the tourists under it looking up”.  Too true – have already used this clue twice on the trip to spot our first few Koalas in the wild.

SA Crossing

To kill an hour after we arrived, and despite the persistent southerly, we walked up the hill to view the iconic Blue Lake (a lovely cobalt blue this time of year). After a few minutes Sam chimed in with the title of our future travel guide-book ‘Can we go now?’.

The next morning we pottered around Mt Gambier, taking in a pump house tour of the blue lake (6/10), the lovely but smelly Umpherston Sink Hole, and the cave gardens in the town center.

At this point I dropped Kris and the boys at the library to hang out and soak up some free WiFi before being given an insight into the fascinating and highly secret world of tissue making with a personal tour of the Kimberly Clark facility at Millicent from Adam. Interesting for an engineer.

Before leaving for Naracoorte, I spotted some well priced diesel ($1.16), so filled both of Betsy’s tanks for the first time.