Halls Gap, Port Fairy, Robe

It’s too hot for a fire but it is the first place we are allowed and we need it to roast our marshmallows. We have some great neighbours who’ve lent us a road trip book.  Ben peruses the tome of road trips and decides, as everyone we meet recommends, we should travel to Alice Springs. Theres talk of an emu wandering around the campsite that afternoon but we don’t spot the giant bird anywhere. 

We enjoy breakfast at a lovely cafe in town and instead of a cheeky sparrow pinching abandoned crusts there is a cockatoo dining at the table next-door with a trusty lookout. (Check out the pic). 

The nature trail to Venus Baths, which starts in town, is just beautiful and well worth the walk, then it’s back on the road to Port Fairy for Ben’s wallet. We’re well underway by the afternoon,  the sun is hiding and a shower passes through, we’re out of the Grampians and back in farmland when Ben starts getting a warning about the tyre pressure in the right rear inner wheel.

The pressure is dropping quickly and I’m searching google maps up ahead for a safe spot to stop this mammoth beast. We park on a side road and as soon as we open our doors we hear it, a solid hissing noise, either there’s one angry snake under there or we have ourselves a seriously loud deflating tyre. Jacks down, tools out.  A passing farmer kindly stops to help us out. Ben gets the first dually off and the two extensions for inflating the inner dual are both perished and are hissing furiously. We’re really confused at to how this could’ve been damaged but we sub the tyre for the spare and she’s all back together minus the inflation extensions, all in under an hour. It’s just after 2:30 and we know the cafe closes at 3:30 but it’s okay cause our ETA says 2:58. We make it to the cafe only to find the cafe is closed. He calls the number from that morning and lucky enough the lady hasn’t left for the day and Ben gets his wallet back, hooray.

We’ve a fair haul now to Robe, South Australia.It was a late breakfast and it’ll be a very late lunch just before the border to eat our fruit and veg that we’re not allowed to take across. We have dinner at 5pm behind a BP in the dusty carpark, then back in the road to make use of the late afternoon sun. 

We cross the border and immediately there are pine trees instead of bush and gums and the speed limit is 110, welcome to South Australia. The roads are straight but the roos are hard to spot in the setting sun and I point out one perched in long grass at the edge of the road and as we near he bounds almost lazily across in front of us. Ben slows and gives it a beep beep as we sail passed. 

There’s a bushfire somewhere nearby and I find a scheduled burn online but it’s miles away and we assume the smoke has drifted but it’s thick and the smell is strong. 

We roll into our park on dark and settle in to the smelly idle town of Robe. Yes smelly, April was actually in tears the first night as she was convinced one of us had done it and she was going to have to smell it all night. But google knows it is just the lake we’re parked beside.