West, north, south, west again, east and now north again...

We enjoyed the Great Ocean Road with its spectacular coastal scenery but found it busier than we prefer so retreated in to the empty Otway Ranges for peaceful camping, a sighting of a platypus and some good mountain biking at Forest on my 51st birthday. Cape Otway provided a good walk out to the lighthouse and a surprisingly close encounter with koalas out in the eucalyptus forests.

Sarah has managed to rearrange her travel plans to get home a week early on the 23rd of March so she can join in a girls weekend - full marks to Singapore Airlines for free amendments and Qantas for a full refund. Less marks to the car hire company who wanted almost double for an extra week so lost the booking completely.

Thus we have a fortnight to reach Adelaide so continued along the coast via under sung Port Fairy with its gun battery and stumpy lighthouse and on in to South Australia. Here we enjoyed the delightful and empty limestone coast, climbed a few extinct volcanoes and marvelled at the distances we have covered and have to cover - the 1200km indicated from Sydney in a straight line to Cape Northumberland has in reality been 12000 miles ( not a typo ) but of course we did cover all of Tasmania, my route to Perth will be almost as indirect if the outback floods have receded and the roads are passable.

Mt Gambier's blue lake was remarkable after which we returned to Vic. collecting the stash of fruit and veg. we had hidden back over the border as there are strict controls against fruit fly in the region.

Dartmoor was a sleepy village with some clever wood carvings and after enjoying the walk to the top of long extinct Mt Napier where the flat reality of outback Australia unfolded we are now in Penshurst on a campsite near the park - excellent facilities, only one other guest and handy for the village - good value at £6 a night.

The Grampians beckon for this week and the Little Desert, Big Desert, Wyperfeld and Murray- Sunset parks will be our target again subject to access prior to the run across to Adelaide.

The slide show returns to the start of our NZ trip in September 2009.

Otherwise the recent pics are here and our whereabouts here.

We have also added a search facility so if you want to find a place we have been to etc. you can now do so easily.