The primeval view from the bottom of the Umpherston Sinkhole, Mount Gambier.

The Umpherston Sinkhole, like many of the other attractions at Mount Gambier, was formed hundreds of thousands (or millions) of years ago by volcanic activity.

In the 1800s, the sinkhole was turned into a garden and still is today; it’s open night and day and is free. While taking photos at the bottom we met a retired man who has been traveling around Australia with his wife since June (around 10 months) and was on his way to Adelaide then back home to Perth. A very nice man who had a good eye for, and opinion of architecture.

The sinkhole, to me, felt very primeval (or primordial, if you’d prefer). The large leaves on the right, the tall trees on the left. Everything was big, herbacious and I half imagined a dinosaur to poke it’s head around the corner. I very much enjoyed the sinkhole.

Except for the possums, who had made the place home and were being fed by most of the visitors who were only there to see the “cute” possums.

Just before Easter, we decided it’d be fun to have a road trip.  The only decision left was where.  Since we’ve been to all of the eastern states, we opted to head west.  Adelaide is close and ideal for a short road trip, so Adelaide it was.

We headed off; entertainment was provided by a laptop, which in turn connected to the car’s stereo.  Through this we had more music than we could listen to on the entire trip, even if it was constantly playing — which it wasn’t.  Also connected to the laptop was a webcam — constantly snapping pictures — and a PDA on which TomTom was installed (and communicating with my GPS unit).   The PDA turned out to be useless as the battery is so old it just turned off at inopportune moments.

Still, we made do and travelled on the first day to Warrnambool via the Great Ocean Road.  We’d initially planned on heading almost directly to the Twelve Apostles but instead opted to travel the entire length of the road.  We arrived at the Twelve Apostles as the sun was setting and this made it difficult to take photos with the sun directly behind the large rocks.  London Bridge Arch, a very large rainbow, and a bit more picturesque scenery provided a few more stops before we arrived at our first destination.

We checked in and headed into Warrnambool — I don’t get what all the fuss is about.  Neither did Justine.  In the morning we drove around Warrnambool a little more and arrived at the same conclusion.  So, we headed off to Portland, where we caught a small diesel-powered tram and rode about the town.  After an ordinary lunch we resumed our driving across the border to Mount Gambier.  I liked Mount Gambier a lot more than Warrnambool.  Here, we checked out the beautiful Blue Lake (it’s blue!), climbed up a very large hill to stand on the edge of a dormant volcano.  Very deep, very steep, and I was suitably impressed.  We returned into the town proper where we checked out a small cave and the Umpherston Sinkhole, which was quite pretty at night… if you can stand all the possums.

Third morning and we headed to Millicent for a quick and early lunch.  We had intended on visiting Robe on Dad’s recommendation but accidentally headed toward Kingston SE.  With just over quarter of a tank of petrol.  Kingston SE was over 100km away.  With no stores inbetween.  I didn’t realise until we were 30% of the way there; the next 45 minutes were quite tense as we watched the odometer, the petrol guage, the time and our phone’s reception.  Luckily the reception was pretty good the entire way even though we didn’t need it, we arrived in Kingston SE with the needle hovering just over the E line.  With the car now full of petrol, we said a quick hello to the Big Lobster and headed to Adelaide — making sure the car was always at least half full of petrol!

In Adelaide, we checked into our hotel and wandered around the centre of town.  Marveling at the sheer number of weddings (we counted at least six or seven happening simultaneously) we wandered for a bit before taking the tram to Glenelg.  It feels very much like St Kilda, so we weren’t excited and headed back to Adelaide.  Though we did have ice cream — the tram conductor warned us we weren’t allowed to have ice cream on board, but let us on anyway.  She waved goodbye when we disembarked the tram back in the city.

Earth Hour was upon us, so we headed to Victoria Square which seemed like a rather central part of town to us.  There were a number of signs throughout Adelaide promoting Earth Hour, but we only saw the fountain and town hall turn off their lights.  We weren’t the only ones standing there disappointed (there were a couple of camera crews and half a dozen photographers).  After a few moments where it was evident there would be no more participants, we headed to the casino.

After a few rounds of roulette, we turned two $5 chips into $90 which, we decided, was quite enough for us — besides, Adelaide doesn’t seem exactly rich so it wouldn’t be fair to take all their money.  We grabbed some dinner and back at the hotel we turned in.

We checked out of the hotel a few minutes to eleven, and drove virtually straight home — but not without stopping at the Giant Koala first.