Day 10 - Mt Gambier to Cobboboonee National Park

Good sleep? Not quite! :( We spent half the night listening to various trucks going past (sometimes it sounded as if they were coming straight for us but sailed past. Phew. I guess that's one down side to canvas walls in the van), but towards the morning we managed to sleep in a bit.

Once we'd had a coffee and the kids had a bit of an explore we had breakfast packed up and headed back into Mt Gambier to do some food shopping and hardware bits and pieces.
After we had finished our shopping we found a nice picnic spot and had some lunch.



 

After lunch we had a tour of the Blue lake pumping station. The 45 minute tour which took us in a glass paneled lift down the original dolomite well shaft, from which water was originally extracted, through a tunnel to see the Blue Lake at close proximity. We now know why it is called the Blue lake. During December to March, the lake turns to a vibrant cobalt blue colour, returning to a colder steel grey colour for April to November. The exact cause of this phenomenon is still a matter of conjecture, but likely it involves the warming of the surface layers of the lake during the summer to around 20 °C (68 °F), causing calcium carbonate to precipitate out of the solution and enabling microcrystallites of calcium carbonate to form. This results in scatter of the blue wavelengths of sunlight. During winter, the lake becomes well mixed, and recent research indicates that during this phase of the colour cycle, the lake is somewhat murkier due to the redistribution of tannins and calcium carbonate particles throughout the lake. The angle of the sun also has some influence on the perceived colour of the lake, so during summer when the sun is more overhead it looks bluer than in winter when the sun is more to the north. The movement of planktonic life forms within the lake during the seasons and during the day may additionally play a part in the colour change.

Aaaanyway, science lesson over... this station pumps water up to some tanks on the hills, where the whole of the town is gravity fed. This results in a surprising amount of pressure - all houses must be fitted with a pressure regulator so they don't get too MUCH pressure! Amazing from gravity fed, but fair enough considering it's coming from a fair height.

While down at the viewing platform we saw a few long necked turtles. (I'm not sure if you can see from the picture on the right but it's on some rocks to the bottom right)













After leaving the pumping station we decided it was probably time to find somewhere to camp for the night so looked up some possibly spots on Wikicamps. This commenced a pretty frustrating hour or so as spot after spot promised much but delivered little!

First we headed for place called Brown Bay which looked like it was going to be quite nice be turned out to be just a bitumen carpark near the beach and had a horrible smell of seaweed. So we decided to move on. Another spot was closer to Donovans right on the SA/VIC border, but that turned out to be literally just a strip of grass where a road used to be, and a sewage farm on the other side! So off we went again to look at ANOTHER spot which seemed quite promising as we were driving in, but then....it was actually more like a boat ramp with a few spots cars with boat trailers could pull in - maybe camper vans could fit in, be but nothing our size, so off we went again. 😞 Frustration levels were climbing by now!

We drove another 50kms through parts of bushland that looked like it had been affected by some bushfires at some stage but had some new growth coming through so was starting to look a little greener again. But quite surreal.

We finally found a neat spot in the Cobboboonee National Park. Perfect for a few days. 👍 A few other campers but lovely and quiet.

We set up camp and had some dinner. During dinner the kids spotted a wallaby and tried to feed it a few bits of carrot scraps. They got fairly close but it was a bit nervous and hopped away. Also spotted a few cute little fairy wrens.


--Mim