April 25th, 2011
Portland to Mount Gambier
Distance: 113km
Total distance: 1907km
Early in the morning, I was awoken by the sound of 4WDs leaving the caravan park with their fishing boats. Went back to sleep until the sky was bright. It was clear blue sky today! I’m in a particularly good mood today cause I’m about to enter my fourth state, South Australia!
Cloudless sky usually means a sweaty day for me. But not today, thanks to the shady trees that lined the roadsides all the way to Nelson. Seeing the traffic was light, I plugged in my headphones and listen to almost the entire discography of Modest Mouse. Riding with their fast-beat music makes my ride seems faster and so much more enjoyable!
The next town out of Portland was Nelson, about 70km away. I wanted to make it there for lunch but at 60km I just couldn’t hold my hunger any longer so I stopped at a rest area to have a munch. It was here that I found out I lost one of my flags! 🙁 It’s the one with my blog URL and my carp streamer was gone too. Now I wonder if anyone picks it up would contact me, unlikely I guess.
I reached Nelson at 3pm. Nelson was quite a scenic place. As it was still sunny that time, there were families and couples picnicking and playing water sports at Glenelg River. I was really tempted to stay here, but Mount Gambier was only 34km away, so after a short break I pushed on.
When crossing the VIC/SA border, I expected a quarantine inspection station but there was only a quarantine bin for interstate travellers to dump their fruits and vegetables. Just before exiting Victoria, there was an unusual sight of police performing alcohol test on vehicles traveling into VIC from SA. As soon as I crossed the border, I noticed a couple of changes. First, the shoulder disappeared and second, the road surface becomes teeth-jarring rough! Because of these, my speed immediately dropped 4kmh. As a result, the remaining 30km journey to Mount Gambier was slow and fatiguing. As if this wasn’t bad enough, all the way to Mount Gambier I was harassed by endless streams of spiderwebs. Where did they come from!? I had spiderwebs sticking on my trike, my face, my sunnies, and I probably ate a few too.
It wasn’t all that bad though, as I was approaching Mount Gambier, I was riding into a beautiful sunset. Spoke to an elderly couple at the information bay to get directions to the caravan park nearest to CBD. Booked into the caravan park two nights straight as I wanted a rest day tomorrow.
I wasn’t very keen to ride into the town centre after that so I took a stroll to the CBD. I find the size of the city rather disappointing, looks like a suburb in Melbourne rather than a city. Was hoping to see some tall buildings since this is the No. 2 largest city in SA afterall. Despite that, I was pleasantly surprised by the presence of not 1, but 2 Malaysian restaurants! Needless to say, I had a Malaysian meal that night – Nasi Goreng. Wasn’t the best Nasi Goreng but its a nice break from hamburgers, fish and chips, and meat pies!
