Having enjoyed our first genuine motel experience, we leave at about 10.00 to forage for coffee in Robe.

The friendly (but ever so slightly busy body) owner yesterday had recommended a local place to us. So, off we went to inspect her recommendation - Mahalia coffee. Oh my, what a place. Check out the review on the other blog!...It gains the top spot!!

Before we leave Robe, we take some time to check out the local sights. We head to the Robe obelisk (basically a lighthouse without a light) and look out over the pristine Southern Australia coastline. Having walked around a bit, we drive to the nearby 'Fox beach'. Here we enjoyed the slightly 'muddy' sand, that we deduced had slightly more clay in it than usual. A strange texture, but it's all about variety, isn't it?

As we leave Robe, our impression is slightly confused. It is simply a small, quaint town with 800 in situ residents, that then increases to 10,000 over summer holidays! This made finding a bed incredibly difficult for people like us, yet the place is fairly unremarkable. We conclude its just a local vacationing spot for Melburnians.

Feeling the heat of the day already, we pop in the car. We enjoy a cheeky picnic lunch in Millicent, in their cute Jubilee park. We eat the dhukka that we bought from the olive grove yesterday, and muse whether or not the Olive Oil eduction we received yesterday was correct, or not.

Driving through Mt Gambier forest, we take a slight detour to the 'Blue Lake', just outside Gambier. So this is abit of a geological wonder, that we don't fully understand despite reading the information boards (plus it's too hot to stick around!!) But in essence, it's a former volcano, whose crater is full of colbat blue freshwater. Initially used by the settlers here as drinking water for Gambier, they've recently realised they can't just take the water unsustainably. Quite what the traditional aborigines thought when Europeans first trampled over this sacred place... The crater is one of 3, with the Blue Lake being the largest. 70m deep and 5km in circumference. Big!

We then pop into Gambier town itself (2 mins away) to see the Cave Gardens, a sink hole in the middle of town. It's a shady park that surrounds a limestone sink hole, where at the bottom, there is a steam that (apparently) leads straight into the Blue Lake.

At this point, South Australia wins. We're so, so hot so we have to retreat and grab an iced tea and/or lemonade and recover indoors. It's sometimes brutal here!

We then passed a ship outside the Information Centre. We didn't stop, but I was instructed to document this here. So... there we have it.

Next we visited another other sink hole a little out of town, the Umpherston sink hole. This one was simply stunning and one of the highlights of the tour. A very large space, that had been decorated with flower beds, hedges, vines and walkways. This really felt like a 'secret garden'. It also has numerous natural beehives, which was fascinating to watch.

Moving on (as we we still had some distance to cover on the road), we swapped driving in Heywood, and passed a large wind farm near Codrington, which apparently they run tours around.

Arriving a little late to our air bnb in Allansford (the other side of Warranambool) this unfortunately means we skipped Port Fairy. This is rubbish, as it had been specifically recommended to us by Dave, our previous air bnb host. The good news is, we're now perfectly place to tackle the Great Ocean Road tomorrow!!

The bnb house house is huge, and we are welcomed by two exited little dogs. We drive back out to the local woolies, cook spag bol for tonight and tomorrow night, and plan our day tomorrow before turning in.

AF