Day 80: We leave Adelaide for Ouyen and end up in Mt Gambier instead (20/08/12)

We were now ready for the last stretch from Adelaide down to Melbourne. As we did not want to a boring old drive down the highway to Melbourne, and as Joke had a particular longing for a visit to Echuca, we devised a plan to drive across the Mallee to Ouyen, then on to Swan Hill and along the Murray to Echuca. From there we could go over Bendigo down to Melbourne. OK, that was the plan.

We got away in good time, as Ouyen was a fair distance and we had a largish town to get out of. We drove up the pass into the Adelaide Hills, getting down to second gear on occasion. After a long climb we levelled out and then descended more gently down to Murray Bridge. At Tailem Bend we took the Mallee Highway instead of the Dukes Highway. This road would take us to Pinnaroo and then into Victoria.

Well, we had not driven more than about 20 kms when it turned out that Joke’s desire to do the Great Ocean Road was bigger than her desire to see Echuca. My wish to revisit Mount Gambier was larger than my wish to see the Mallee country. So we stopped by the side of the road, turned the caravan around and went back to a side road south which would take us back to the Dukes Highway to Keith, 

The approach to Keith

where we would turn south again to go down to Mount Gambier via Naracoorte.

As we drove down the weather changed somewhat until it was fairly cool and windy by the time we got to Mount Gambier. We set up at the Big4 park there and went for a bit of a walk. Our objective was to see if the Blue Lake was really blue. It was, sort of. 

The Blue Lake was just getting a recharge of blue - note how that colour is missing from the rainbow.

Rainbow blue at the edge of Blue Lake, before it mixed with the rest of the water.

Delicate and understated, but still a nice sunset at Mount Gambier

As the weather was really being mean to us now, we went back to the caravan and turned on the heater.