Thursday 27 September 2007

German town & pink lake

Our second last day was spent visiting Hahndorf, the German town which is about 26km from Adelaide. It was originally settled by German immigrants and still has many their influence in its pubs, cafes, crafts, food and drinks. It’s a bit like some areas in the Dandenongs in that respect. Take your pick of cafes for a coffee or other beverage, not to mention all kinds of wurst (German sausage), fudge and many other yummy goodies. There are some interesting craft shops and I would have liked to have more time, more money and no Fin watching over my shoulder to enjoy these properly however it was still interesting to look however brief. We picked a cafe to have Devonshire tea then headed off again toward Robe on our way to Mount Gambier. The countryside was very pretty; green and lush hills but apparently strong winds in the area which we could see by the way the trees were being blown and had grown. Not far from Hahndorf is Murray Bridge which I imagine is a popular holiday spot but we didn’t take the turn-off to the actual town but continued on over the Murray River – It’s huge up this far compared to where we often cross it on the NSW – Victoria border.
As we were travelling along, we suddenly saw a pink patch ahead among the paddocks to our left. It would appear that there was a pink lake there which we assumed has been made pink by bacteria like the one that we tried to see in Esperance but it wasn’t pink at that time of year. I am not sure why this one was pink but it seemed to have a heavy salt deposit on its shore. It really looks like someone dumped a dye in the lake. So we got to see a pink lake after all. The sky became cloudier as we went along and when we were nearly at Robe, going through a place called Kingston where, believe it or not they have a big lobster, it started to rain. I got out of the car at Robe and it wasn’t really raining but was incredibly windy – I’d say gale force actually. I could barely walk straight when it was going across and when I tried to walk against it, I could barely move. I took some photos of the beach in the town and just got back to the car when the rain came down in bucket loads! We went into town to the bakery and got some warm food and drinks then set off into the rainy weather to Mt Gambier. Our initial plan was to go to the long beach that you can drive on but in this weather it was not going to be possible unfortunately.
The rest of the drive was done with the wipers going almost non-stop and a bit more concentration was required of course in those wet, slippery conditions. The amount of water on and beside the road was amazing actually and the rain just kept on coming down and so did the temperature. It was 20 degrees when we left Hahndorf then it dropped to 16 at about Kingston then by the time we got to Mount Gambier it was 12 degrees!

Well, tomorrow is our last day and there will be a few more photos no doubt but the other day my camera reset it's numbering system because I have taken 10,000 photos on it! About 7,000 of those were taken on this trip! Eventually I will get some more up onto my webshots albums page but be patient!

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