Our S.A. coastal adventure – day 2

Day 2

We drove back to Little Desert, but this time did another track (Ponderoo Hill – I think) and Stringybark Track and then went back and did the River Track again. It was again cold, wet and drizzly and not as many animals to be seen and still very few wildflowers. A few kangaroos and emus, but not as many as the night before, even though it was still early. I can’t blame them it was not the nicest weather.

We left Little Desert and after a brief stop at Pink Lakes (We did not stop at Green Lake as it was raining heavily). Pink Lakes is an inland salt lake, it actually had lots of water – far more than we were expecting. A brief stop here, before the rain returned. We stopped at Serviceton Railway Station, a huge old Station, it was an exchange between SA and Victoria, where the railway gauges differed and people could buy tickets from Adelaide to Melbourne. But again, the rain cut our visit short. Driving through more barley and canola fields that lined the highway, we passed the South Australian/Victorian border and headed to Bordertown and a VERY interesting Bakery Cafe for lunch. It was full of pioneer history and locals items from the community, so much history and bits and pieces, I was suffering a severe case of prop envy! It is also the home town of Ex-Prime Minister Bob Hawke who died recently, as well as an interesting Pioneer Village (which was shut the day we were there and could not visit). So we continued onto Coonalpyn for some more silo art, which we had not seen before. After some photos and a coffee, we headed off to Murray Bridge.

We stopped and took some images of the Bridge (both actually – there are two) and some fabulous abandoned houses in the area. We had a lot of fun exploring them, even the weather had improved and had stopped raining and was not quite so cold.

We drove on to Mount Barker – a weird town, we could not find a single Motel or caravan park? So we continued onto Strathalbyn, such a wonderful town steeped in history and so many wonderful buildings, established in 1839. We spent some time exploring the area, lots of cute miners cottages and stone buildings. There used to be small lead, zinc, gold and copper mines operated in the area in the latter part of the 19th century, but these have all been long closed. Now it is all tourism-based.

~Julz

READ DAY 1 HERE