A Victoria to South Australia Roadtrip

Here are five things I’ve learnt as a family of four on a 14 night roadtrip from Victoria to South Australia.

1. My last roadtrip was over 11 years ago across the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. I remember reading, wandering, laughing with friends, day drinking, tuning out to watch the incredible passing landscape. This weeks’ trip played out to the soundtrack of Trolls 2, near constant drizzle, and the sound of my 5 year old and 7 year old punctuating every sentence with ‘I’m hungry.’ Let me be upfront here, roadtrips with children are more like endurance tests than holidays. There’s very little downtime!
   
2. When I asked said little people to sum up their highlights, they named playing on Wye River beach in a hailstorm, the waterslide in Glenelg, rainbow flavoured icecream in Port Fairy, a game of air-hocky in the daggy campsite games room in Robe, some rusty go-carts in Port Campbell and making friends in a rainy playground in Meningie. No mention of the Naracoorte Caves, Mount Gambier or the Twelve Apostles. Sorry UNESCO.
   
3. After seven campervan set up and packs ups we came closer to being a well-choreographed team with our snack boxes, charged phones, dirty laundry contained to one giant Ikea bag, and everything generally in its place, in under 20 minutes. For the record, our longest attempt took 3 hours one year at Walkerville. So, progress.
   
4. The Australian spring weather was NOT on our side. We slept in sleeping bags, under two woolen fire blankets, in four layers of jumpers and a beenie, nightly from 8pm. When the sun finally emerged (day 13 of 14!) we all became our best selves. We hiked to Venus Baths and The Pinnacle in Halls Gap all in one day. We finally had the moment; sat around a campfire, playing cards, toasting marshmallows, telling bedtime stories under the stars. It felt like we’d eared it!
   
5. In all honesty, it took us until day 10 to hit our stride. This trip was meant to be a teaser for a bigger round Australia trip one day. It confirmed one thing; that a big round Australia trip is really not high up on our bucket list anymore, and that our love and longing for South East Asia still burns strong.

Where we stayed

Wye River Caravan Park, NRMA Port Campbell Holiday Park, Narrawong Island Holiday Park, Discovery Park Robe, Lake Albert Caravan Park Meningie, Oaks Adelaide Horizons Suites, The Little Miss House Boat Murray Bridge Marina, Big4 Naracoorte Holiday Park, Breeze Holiday Park Halls Gap.

Best eats

Lavender fudge at Adelaide Farmers Market, Toasted Sourdough bread from Adelaide Central Market, Let Them Eat at Adelaide Central Market, the Bloody Mary at Wye General Store, Blueberry Poko Sticks from Warrnambool Coles.

This post was written on the traditional Country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. I pay my respect to Aboriginal Elders past and present.

Queenscliffe and Sorrento, Victoria

Today was Kika the camper trailer’s second voyage. We took a full three hours to set her up. To be fair, this time we went FULL ANNEX, which means we had four cosy canvass walls wrapped around our kitchen area. Nice. It also means we braced torrential rain for a night, with the classic family bonding experience of playing cards whilst huddling together under blankets.

Our camp site at Queenscliffe Tourist Park (site number #5) was a small but grassy patch on the edge of the local cricket oval.  Even the ocean view from 50m away was unfortunately not enough to place it in my good books, given that I felt that I was forced to shush the kids every 5 minutes on average because we felt almost on top of our neighbours. It’s my rookie mistake though; always check the site map! I need to starts a rating system really. My rockstar rider list consists of: 1) soft grass 2) An Instagramable view from the bull-bar window 3) Space for the kids to be loud and free.

After two nights we packed up the car & trailer and hopped across Naarm Bay/Port Phillip Bay on the Searoad ferry. After the Covid_19 lockdown this year, it’s been a while since I’ve felt such absolute freedom as staring at the horizon of the open ocean (Well, okay, the Bay.) The last boat I sailed on was a Vietnamese basket boat over a year ago, so today topped my adventure cup up again.

As did a couple of hours in Sorrento. The high-street is not really my vibe with it’s Country Road and Lulu Lemon outlets, but I easily bypassed those in favour of the Vanilla Slice Café. I do love an vanilla slice. The sunshine came out long enough for a birthday picnic on the foreshore and an ankle deep paddle. Next time, when the water isn’t below 20 degrees, I have my sights set on swimming out to the floating pontoon just off the pier.  Which should have my adventure cup overflowing after this year.

I would like to acknowledge the Wada Wurrung people as the owners and traditional custodians of the land of which I’ve written about in the Queenscliffe section and the Boon Wurrung of the Kulin Nation in the Sorrento section of this post. I pay my respects to their elders past, present and continuing.

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