The Coorong

The storm passed and the sun sneaked out between the clouds in time for me to take a ride around Kingston S.E. before I pushed on to the night’s campsite. The cycle way is brilliant, running parallel to the beach around Lacepede Bay for about six kilometres, then skirting the town and winding its way around each of the town’s recreation areas. Kingston S.E. is also very RV friendly, which is unusual for a seaside town, and now offers overnight free camping for self-contained vehicles. I would have stayed if I had known (I’ll have to update my book!) but I needed to travel a few more kilometres for the day. I do struggle to do more than 100kms a day – there’s so much to see and explore! So I waved to the Big Lobster as I headed out of town, and witnessed the colours of the setting sun as I pulled into my chosen freedom camp, about 25kms north towards Robe.

 Seaweed mounds on Kingston S.E. beach

Freedom camp

 

Robe is a quaint but cosmopolitan town with many scores of historic sites and buildings and is a popular luxury tourism destination, favoured also for its rock lobster. Baudin Rocks, located off shore, was the last place name applied in South Australia in 1802 by Matthew Flinders, Commander of H.M. Sloop Investigator in honor of the Commander of the French expedition, Nicolas Baudin. Robe was once a major colonial out-port, but the fall in produce prices, poor agricultural seasons and the introduction of the railway soon turned the bustling, thriving town into a quiet country village.

 Flinders and Baudin outside Customs House, Robe

Our Lady Star of the Sea, Robe

After driving through Coorong National Park beside a 140km long saline lagoon, the next stop for the day was Meningie, the northern gateway to The Coorong on the shores of Lake Albert, which has the cleanest public restrooms I have ever come across. It is also home to many pelicans (live ones) and an ostrich (a sculpture). The story goes that South Australia’s only bushranger used to get around on an ostrich, as it could make an easy getaway in the sand dunes. John Francis Peggotty half-naked and draped in stolen jewellery brandished ornate pistols at his victims until one day he was shot. Riding off into the sand hills on his trusty ostrich he was never seen again, apparently succumbing to his wounds. So if you find his remains, you may just become a very rich person.

Lake Albert, Meningie

Meningie foreshore

 

Now I’m just outside of Adelaide, staying with friends: actually they were guests of SkiLib over New Year’s Eve. Gary kindly fixed their car so they could return home from their Mt Buller holiday, and have offered in return a place to park the motorhome and give it the once over before the big trip across the Nullarbor. After a road ride into the city on a sunny penultimate autumn day, a wet and muddy mountain bike ride through Blackwood down to Flinders University was on the agenda today. Life is just one big bike ride really.

P.S. As I’m writing this, a koala is roaming up and down the eucalypt tree just outside my window.