Wednesday 7 March 2012, Good Friday; Riding from Adelaide to Mt Gambier SA

Dave and I set off in good weather for a pleasant day's riding. Silly me thought being Good Friday the roads would be quiet, but no, every car with a caravan was out there as we got further away from the city. When we got to a free ferry crossing at a little town called Wellington we had to wait for 1 1/2 hours in a long queue. Never mind, we chatted away with other travellers.

Then when we were riding along a beautiful coastal strip "The Coorong" which is an environmental place of value, we were buffeted by big winds…up to 78km/hour we were told later. Poor Dave had a devil of a time holding the big Honda bike and trailer steady on the road all the way…and it slowed him down a lot. As a solo rider I was better off because I presented less wind resistance, though I had to move my body sideways over the bike to stabilise it at times, and several times it felt like my helmet was trying to lift off, or my head fly off. At one stage I thought "I'm too old for this wind surfing" but then I laughed and realised it would be just as challenging for a younger rider.

At Meningie there is a beautiful inland Lake Albert, which is supposed to be "tranquil" but it was blowing a gale with big waves. We stopped to eat the world's worst pies at a crummy bakery; funny how you'll eat anything when fatigued and hungry! Dave wanted us to get going before rains hit us with the terrible winds, and yes, it got harder. I must say I found it an adventure, seeing the Coorong coastline whipping up with waves, and beautiful big pelicans flying overhead in parts. Dave had the hardest job pulling along the trailer.

When we stopped for a much needed coffee at Kingston, home of the giant lobster, people in the shop made seafaring jokes at us; we looked like a couple of dishevelled windswept scarecrows staggering in.

We eventually got to Mt Gambier at dusk, not a good time to be arriving, but because of Easter, accommodation everywhere was booked out. We had a tent site already booked at the central caravan park and hoped to have a cabin for the 1st night as we were b*****ed but the caravan manager said sorry, no room at the inn, we have to stick with our powered tent site.

So we had to do our tent erection in the cold dark and rain, blowing a blizzard. Luckily we were wearing our wet weather motorbike gear so we stayed dry but when a tent pole snapped in the wind the tent tried to take off, much to the amusement of other campers watching us from the safety of their caravans. One nice man angel came out and turned on his car headlights for us, as well has giving us his rubber mallet to use. The grassed area was as hard as hell's rocks for hammering tent pegs in. I held a torch for Dave to quickly gaffer tape the broken tent pole and somehow we managed to get our tent up. At one stage in the blizzard and dark I burst out laughing thinking "What would our kids and grandkids think if they could see us now?" It was wet inside our tent once we got the outside fly safely up, but luckily we had a $15 little fan heater and so this quickly dried out the inside of the tent. Once we were fully set up we headed off round the corner to the main street, so famished and fatigued we would've eaten cardboard if that was all we could find on a wet Good Friday night in a country town. But we were still lucky, there was a nice warm Chinese restaurant and when we walked in still wearing our glistening wet motorbike gear, a Chinese lady asked us if we had been fishing.

The meal was so yummy and the glass of beer each was the best we've ever tasted. Then it was back to our Shangri-La tent for a well- earned sleep, nice and dry and cosy by now. Next morning we were actually very surprised to see how well the tent had been erected, and other campers were amazed too. We heard tales of other tents in the district blowing away and people thought we didn't have a hope of getting our home up successfully. Having good heavy duty ground pegs made a big difference; I don't know why all tents are supplied with pissy little skinny ground pegs and Dave had upgraded to stronger ones before we left home. And in the morning he bought a new length of fibreglass tent pole to replace the broken bit.

We spent Easter Saturday relaxing round the camp site, doing our laundry, then a leisurely stroll around Mt Gambier town site to see what there was to see.