Monday, October 26, 2015

Day 7 - Sinkholes and Stalactites

Bryce, Liam and Chy-Anne get ready for the Victoria Fossil Cave Tour

One week into our South Australian trip and we finally crossed into South Australia!


Shoe tree!

Good bye Victoria - see you again in a few days!

The first major stop on our 6 hour drive up to Adelaide was Mount Gambier. Famous for 3 different geographical features that we had to see for ourselves.

The Umpherston Sinkhole (or "The Sunken Garden")


This was once a cave that was formed by the dissolution of limestone. 
It has been turned into an amazing garden.













This cafe was an amazing find in Mount Gambier. 
Incredible coffee and the cleanest bathrooms/laundry that we've ever seen!


The Blue Lake


That's Centenary Tower in the distance - we didn't end up climbing it since it wasn't open today (they fly and flag at the tower to let you know that it's open)

This lake is a volcanic crater and its water actually changes in shade and colour (greys and blues) depending on the time of year. 



We've seen the 'love locks' in a number of places on our travels



The Devil's Punchbowl and Valley Lake



We left Mt. Gambier and continued on our drive. 
In Penola, we stumbled upon the original Mary MacKillop school site and had a look around 
(Chy-Anne has been teaching about this in her Year 5 class).





This furry friend came out to greet us and the boys had a blast playing with him!






We entered into the Coonawarra Wine Region




Our next stop was in Naracoorte. 
The Fossil Caves located here are South Australia's only World Hertiage site. Extinct megafauna from 60,000 years ago are located here in at least 21 known fossil deposits.



Bryce gives the giant wombat megafauna ancestor a leg hug


We had booked a tour of the Victoria Fossil Cave...



This is the original entrance to the Victoria Cave 
(it has since been filled in and a new secure entrance installed).



Shell fossils in the ceiling show how this was once under a sea



Liam used his ipod as a torch for closer inspections.



















The bone pit in the photo below is special as it is a pitfall trap - meaning that for at least 500,000 years many different animals fell in and their bones accumulated for us to find and examine today. This fossil record covers several ice ages and the arrival of humans to this area. 






We returned to higher ground and finished our drive to Adelaide. 

We were eager to catch up with Aussies, Patti and Stephen, 
who exchanged to Canada with our good friends, Paulyne and Todd. 

Day 8 - Around Beautiful Adelaide

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