Heading south to the Fleurieu Peninsula near Adelaide, we could never pronounce Fleurieu no matter how many times we were told it was said, Floo-ree-ooo. Not sure why, we just couldn't. I wanted to get to the coast to see some Australian beaches. A famous part of the Aussie lifestyle. We were driving through wine country. It's pretty but would be better when there's grapes on the vine I'm sure. For hours we drive through towns with wine cellars scattered everywhere, some of the places not looking too bad but mainly unremarkable.
We drove around the Fleurieu Peninsula in a day. It's kind of like a leg sticking out from below Adelaide that is home to loads of beaches and many small towns. Everywhere is pretty much deserted, it is winter I suppose, but still looks nice enough.
The beaches, of which there are many, look awesome and we generally have them all to ourselves. The surf looks good too but there's a reason no-one is here. It's bloody freezing!
Port Victor was the next sizable town, around 30,000 inhabitants compared to the 600 or 700 that occupy most townships. This is where we managed to see a whale. A southern right whale on it's migratory path. Australia is like a living zoo. You don't even have to try and you end up seeing a huge amount of animals going about their business. There is also a horse drawn tram leading out on a pier here, it looked tough work for the horse and I thought it was a bit unfair but tourism is what counts here.
We are definitely in surfers territory now.
We pass towns that have surfboard shaped seats, houses with huge waves painted on them and street names such as 'Surfers Parade'. They do look great places to live, not sure how much work is around though. The beaches are pretty much untouched and in the main undeveloped other than the odd house overlooking the crashing surf.We end up spending most mornings parking up facing the waves somewhere eating muesli, the cheapest breakfast going, and just sitting there mesmerised by the waves. It seems a popular pastime with locals too, every lunchtime you see all manner of vehicles parked up with people having their butties by the surf. Not bad.
We're making our way down to the great ocean road at this point but there's a few nice spots along the way. A great campsite next to a lake, the sun going down when we arrived, with pelicans floating around. Classic views and just brilliant to be on this trip.
Bird watchers would be going mental here, they would probably just implode with excitement. The Coorong National park is where we where. It's like a large wetland area that's home to thousands of bird species and wildlife. We mainly saw huge amounts of pelicans in breeding season. The birds flock here as it's like a huge salty inlet in which fish swim into and get stunned by the salt. Easy prey for the birds makes it a great habitat to live in.
We saw our first of the Australian big things on this section. The biggest rocking horse in the world and a giant Lobster, Larry. These are huge edifices created at the side of the main highway to lure unsuspecting idiots, like us, into spending cash on awful crap.
The giant lobster was outside a lobster restaurant, surprisingly, and it looked plain freaky. Huge! Not something I want to see on a pleasant day. I'm not sure I like these things.
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