After just one night in Mount Gambier, we drove to Murray Bridge. It was one of our longer journeys, 380km, and it took just over 4 hrs. We drove through hectares and hectares of vineyards - including the Coonawarra and Padthaway regions, and others we hadn't heard of eg Wrattonbully. The terrain then changed and became very flat, dry and uninteresting. It was wheat country and we travelled alongside the railway with its Viterra grain silo stations along ...

Next day, March 25, we left Warrnambool for our next stop, Mount Gambier. We stopped at an Irish village called Kuroit. The Irish influence is very pronounced around Warrnambool with names like Killarney, the Belfast Lime Company. Kuroit is a cute little town with some nice buildings and typical Irish humour evident. Their Historical Society had information about their early settlers who came from all over Ireland, including Limerick, but there were no McLoug...

We reluctantly left our fabulous Torquay accommodation on 23 March and set off for Warrnambool. We drove straight through to Lorne, our end point the previous day, stopped briefly at Apollo Bay (a pleasant place) and on to Cape Otway, the second most southerly point in mainland Australia (Wilsons Promontory, in eastern Victoria, is the most southerly point.)  Cape Otway is where the Bass Strait and the Southern Ocean meet. Cape Otway has Australia's most s...

The next day, 21 March, we again woke to rain. We checked out of our hotel and had breakfast in Sorrento which was the first mainland European settlement in Victoria (1803). It's a pretty place with some lovely limestone heritage buildings. We boarded the car ferry which took us across Port Phillip Bay from Sorrento on the Mornington Peninsula to Queenscliffe on the Bellarine Peninsula. The trip took 40 minutes and was very smooth. Unfortunately, we couldn...

We left Melbourne in rain which, we thought, would spoil our plans for sightseeing around the Mornington Peninsula. We were lucky! As we went further south, the weather improved - as did the traffic! It was very heavy getting out of the city which, coupled with the rain, made for a difficult drive at first.   We drove through Frankston to Mornington and then left the main road (Nepean Highway) to drive down the Port Phillip Bay coast road as far as Rosebud. ...