Mt Gambier

We have had a very interesting time here at Mt Gambier. Sometimes you can go to a place and say I could live here well this is true of Mt Gambier. It is an attractive city with some awesome scenery and surrounds. We are staying at the Big 4 Blue Lake Caravan Park which is very near to the Blue Lake and we get to see it whenever we leave the park. The day we arrived it was strickingly blue, hard to even describe the colour blue other than to say it was a deep and bright at the same time. The Lake changes colour from March till November to a grey colour. We are really pleased to have seen it as blue as we did and just in the few days we have been here it seems to have begun the change to grey.

The Lake is where Mt Gambier gets its water supply from. They say that the surface area of the Lake is 70 hectares, the circumference is 5 klms and you can do a 7klm walk around it if you like. It is 70 mtrs deep and has a volume of 36,000 million litres and the towns consumption is

3,600 million litres annually.

Mt Gambier is part of the Limestone Coast so its no surprise that many of the houses are constructed with limestone and are magnificent with the clever combination of the different colours.

Mt Gambier is also the centre of Australia's most developed softwood forestry region and as early as 1876 the first Pinus Radiata trees were planted near here. They continue to plant young trees so the industry will continue for many years.

It is a long weekend here, same as Victoria, though the one here is for the Adelaide Cup. The Caravan Park is busy but not full and as usual people are friendly and always ready for a chat.

We, Ken and I(Pam and Colin had not yet arrived) went to go for an evening walk around the Park as it is quite a big park but we got no further than three vans away when we stopped to have a chat. In the process we got chatting and found that Trish and Jim were from Bundaberg. I have a brother who lives there as does Pam and Colin. As we talked we soon realised that Jim and Trish (Alison) had lived in Orange for many years which is where I (Lyn ) grew up.

We spent the next little while talking about people we both knew. Small world.

Before we left home we knew that the possibility of us getting another van along the way was pretty much certain. We talked about getting a van with a shower and toilet so we are always on the lookout for what's around. Ken found a van that sounded really good. No shower or toilet but everything else that we had wanted seemed to be in this van. It was at Narracorte, a small town some 100klms away so we decided to go have a look at it. We set off with Pam and Colin in their car (ours has no back seats as we've taken them out for the trip away) at 8.15am. It was a pleasant drive which took us through Penola where the wine industry flourishes and took us just on the hour to get there. The van had all the things we had talked about like airconditioning, security door, oven and more cupboards than our other van. It was immaculate both inside and out and was very well priced. We decided it was a bargain not to be missed and agreed that we would both be happy to continue with using the shower tent and the porta potti. so right at this moment we have two vans, one of which we will have to put on consignment on Tuesday. Hopefully that will all go smoothly and be sold ASAP.

Our next stop will be at Mannum and we hope to free camp on the Murray.

Today is Sunday the 7th and we worshipped this morning with the Salvos. It was a lively service and we had the pleasure of listening to the Band and the Timbels being played through the service.

Included this time are some photos we have taken along the way.

Catch up with you soon

Lyn

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