Having woken before dawn, we decided to leave as soon as we had finished our breakfast in the hope of catching an earlier ferry. As we were loading up the car, our lorikeet friend was again feeding on the Callistemon flowers.

Unfortunately, the cyclists we had met yesterday going in the opposite direction to us, were now all leaving their campsite on the way to the ferry port. There were around 200 of them and although there was not too much oncoming traffic, the road goes over a few blind summits, so it took a while to get past them all. We arrived at the port just as the earlier ferry was leaving. The port was very quiet with only a few humans and cormorants fishing.

A lot of passengers were disembarking from the incoming boat and I noticed an older woman with crutches and only one leg. We have had various conversations here about what health insurance covers and what it does not. Perhaps it does not cover prosthetic limbs and if you cannot afford private care you will be left without. We eventually got on the boat and I spotted some dolphins as we left the harbour. We arrived on time and retraced our steps to Delamere, passing lots of Muscle Cars heading for Cape Jervis and an event on the island. We turned onto the B27 which took us over the hills and past a forest to the Encounter Coast and Victor Harbor. We stopped for lunch on the esplanade.

A woman and child on the beach were the focus of interest of the gulls who were hoping they were eating. They were not. Eventually they realised that we had food and some wandered over to have a look.


There is a walkway to Granite Island which sits in the bay and is home to some wild penguins, but we did not have time to visit. The road continues on past Port Eliot and Goolwa. In order to get around Lake Alexandrina, we had to continue to Strathalbyn and then cut across back to Highway One. The road passes through olive groves and vineyards around Langhorne Creek but then the land becomes drier. We past Mulgundawa Salt whose huge pile of salt was visible from the road. At Wellington, there is no bridge across the Murray River; there is a ferry. There are 11 in total on the river and have been winched across since the 19th century. This one was free and open 24 hours a day.

Like a Sunday at home there were a lot of old and interesting cars on the road. Back on Highway One (B1 in these parts) we stopped at the Pink Lake a few km north of Meningie. Like the one we saw a few weeks ago, the colour is due to algae.

The road then runs through Coorong National Park which is on the coast. At Kingston SE, we turned off onto the B101 Southern Port Highway to Robe, a coastal town which was our destination for the night. There was a beer festival on at one end of the esplanade but it was otherwise fairly quiet. I understand that in high season and school holidays it gets very busy. Mileage today was 286 and we have broken the 10,000 mark with our trip mileage now up to 10,157.