Easter 2012 – Day 8
We said goodbye to Warrnambool and Victoria headed to Mount Gambier in South Australia.
We drove the inland route, and stayed on the Princes Highway
We arrived at Mount Gambier fairly early &, booked into the big4 caravan site – booked a cabin this time. We emptied out all the stuff in the car and went to the info centre – the Lady Nelson which has a full size replica of the HMAS vessel for some info.
We went to Umpherston Sinkhole also known as the sunken garden featuring a beautiful terraced garden full of beautiful flowers and shrubs.This was once a cave, the sinkhole was created when the top of the chamber fell to the floor, The gardens were originally beautified in 1886
The cave garden another sinkhole in the middle of town, this wasn’t really pretty but was interesting.
Engelbrecht cave – we did an underground tour here,this is a huge complex of limestone caves underneath the streets of the city. We were shown an area where divers go cave diving, the water looked as though it was only of a few centimetres deep but was actually meters, the reflection in the water were very deceptive, we were also shown another cave diving entry this one was classed as a grade 3 dive as it was in a small hole entrance and very dangerous, the guide on our tour was very knowledgeable.
We drove around the rim of magical Blue Lake, a limestone crater with iridescent blue water , we stopped at various lookouts , for a different view . The water is also the towns only water supply.
We viewed the Leg of Mutton Lake Crater- this was dried out and overgrown with grasses, so we couldn’t really see much.
Last was The Valley Lake Crater & Brown’s Lake in Valley Lake, this was a large lake where we saw people wakeboarding and picnicking, green grassy areas well maintained.
We grabbed a pizza for tea and had a relatively early night.
