Crayfishin'

Greetings,
The Great Ocean Road in the south of Victoria is indeed great, although I suspect it may be significantly greater in a Porsche than in a Nissan Patrol. Some other time perhaps. It leads to Lorne, which is a great thing for a road to do, and the Twelve Apostles, although unfortunately three of the apostles were not to be seen. One fell down a few months back and the other two just don’t exist. I suspect a cover-up. What other lies are we being told about our famous landmarks? This is a country that prides itself on literal place names. Won’t someone think of the children?

Port Fairy is a lovely old town, and would be home for a couple of days. We wander and Graz takes photos of the old houses she loves and I nod and say the right things. I also buy a kite from the town’s hippy kite merchant. He is loving talking to a new kite devotee, but he cools off somewhat when I deride the flame-juggling and flame-dancing antics of his fellow hippies.

It’s hot, and it just gets hotter as we continue westward into South Australia, so much so that we stop at a deserted beach for a swim. Amazingly, whilst I am inside the van changing the weather decides to change at that precise moment, and I emerge in my boardies to a temperature drop of about 15 degrees. So no swimming then.

Let’s play a little game, I will give you the answer to a question and you have to guess the question. Ready? Answer: Port Macdonnell. If you guessed that the question is “where is Australia’s worst public toilet?” then you are absolutely correct! The rest of Port Mac happily doesn’t confront the senses with the same heady mix of odours and insects, and is quite nice in its sleepy crayfish-town way. The crays aren’t for you and I however, unless you happen to live in Tokyo. Oh well, we have arranged a rendezvous in a few days with our friend Marty just down the road in Beachport, and he promises that we will be sick of crays by the time we leave…

Before cray-fest however, there is the small matter of Christmas, and ours would be spent in Mount Gambier, home of the famous Blue Lake (the people who named this lake could teach the 12 Apostles crew a thing or two). Mount Gambier is a surprisingly nice town with lovely old houses made from local limestone, and surprisingly cold. Our Christmas is spent huddled inside the van eating our Christmas treats as the wind and rain does its best to spoil things.

The Blue Lake is quite a marvel, and is apparently not blue from one of those blue toilet things, but is blue because of the temperature of the water and the dissolved limestone, or something like that. You aren’t allowed to swim in it so we will have to take their word for it. Nearby is the scarily named Devil’s Punchbowl, which turns out to be a large circular bowl-shaped depression in the hillside. What message are they sending with this so called “Devil’s Punchbowl”? The devil makes a lot of punch? The evil one has lots of friends over for drinks and nibbles? The nearby “Devil’s Jatz And Cubed Coon” only adds to the intrigue.

Up the road a way is Coonawarra, home of the fancy wine making soil ‘terra rossa’ (that’s red dirt to you and me), and it must have some effect because their red wines are pretty damn good. All the wineries are so accessible here that we (being poor travellers) have to limit the cellar doors we visit, mainly because I can’t not buy at least a couple of bottles at each place we visit. We grace Katnook Estate, Blok and Rymill with our custom, all of them excellent. The entrance to the Rymill cellar has a huge bronze sculpture of a couple of horses having a fight, and their bottle labels feature the same angry horses. It must be confusing for people who cannot read and just look at the picture on the bottle to judge its contents. The vineyards seem endless, kilometre after kilometre of perfect rows of prefect grapevines, so much so that we are surprised to learn that this region provides only 10 percent of South Australia’s wine production.

Back down the highway now to Beachport, and the aforementioned rendezvous with Marty, who normally spends Christmas holidays here with his family. His brother has a good boat and Marty takes me out scuba diving for crays, the first scuba diving I have done for about 20 years. Oh that’s right, my ears always give me grief when I dive, and this time is no exception, in fact they don’t come good for about a month afterwards. Inner Ear Barotrauma is my self-diagnosis (thank you internet). Coincidentally, Graz and I get on famously during the period where I can’t really hear very well.

Our dive in the extremely cold water yielded a total of bugger-all crayfish, although we did stumble over a cave with perhaps 30 or 40 Port Jackson sharks of various sizes piled in on top of each other. Marty bravely or foolishly pokes them with his gaff but they seem to be asleep. A few days later Marty dives alone and comes up with the goods, and the fresh crays are indeed excellent.

Apart from the good company, we are not really enjoying Beachport, mainly as the caravan park comes directly from the 9th circle of hell. It is jammed tightly with holidaying families who vie with each other to be the most obnoxious. The group close behind us has their tv loud enough for everyone to hear, and helpfully leave it on all day too, so now at least we have caught up on the goings on of The Bold And The Beautiful. The group next to us cheerfully tell us that they have been coming here every year for eight years. “On purpose?” is my choked response. The rest of the town is nice enough though. I turn 40. I feel old.

Later,
Brad and Graz

p.s. I should have asked earlier but if you would like to be removed from this mail or would like to be included please send Graz or I a note at grazgarrett@hotmail.com or bradreeson@gmail.com