Great Ocean Road – Day 6, Part 2 – Repost

It’s kind of funny, we never actually planned on going to Mt Gambier, but it ended up being one of the highlights of our trip, especially the caves. Little did we know not long after this the whole region was devastated by bushfires again, even then we knew it was only a matter of time.

Picking up from yesterday, we had left Cape Bridgewater and Nelson and headed for Mt Gambier. A must in Mt Gambier is the Blue Lake, we were very lucky, as it was extremely blue, it has not been this blue in a long time apparently. (No over saturation here guys, the difference in sky is due to putting on a CPL Filter). On a side note, we have seen ‘love locks’ all over the place, anywhere there is a bit of height and a fence they appear.

We visited 3 of the major sink holes in Mt Gambier, including the Garden Caves (right in town), the Umpherston Sinkhole, and the Engelbrecht Caves

I stayed at the top and shot pretty flowers and chased bees! I was happy.

We then drove on to Tantanoola and visited the caves, where we got a rare treat. Due to it being so very quiet we were allowed in there with cameras AND tripods, for as long as we wanted! Amazing. Limited flash photography (wouldn’t have worked anyway) and don’t touch anything (oils from your skin can damage the stalactites), they were our only rules.

We stopped in at the Lady Nelson Museum and Information Centre, and found lots of interesting places on the way to Hamilton via Casterton.

We wanted to stay at Casterton, fascinating old historic town, maybe next trip? Then spent the night in Hamilton. It was so dry everywhere we just knew something had to go by the end of the bush fire season, it was actually kind of scary driving through in the 40C + plus temperatures.

-Julz