Day 14 – Port MacDonnell (Cape Northumberland) to Portland Fairy

A nice night, a bit of rain and not too much wind considering where we are.  The noise of the ocean is pretty constant, it’s nice to hear it. It’s warm in the van and even outside is not quite as cold as yesterday afternoon. We even see a couple of rainbows.

We’re reading and re-reading the travel restrictions into Victoria – do they apply from the 23rd, are they 14 days retrospective to that day, is it 14 days from the day we left? It’s not all that clear.

A walk up to the lookout and while the sea is a little choppier than yesterday, it’s still nowhere near as wild as I thought it might me.  With the brighter light the colour of the ocean is so different from yesterday.

We drive back through town, there is a huge breakwall that forms the harbour here.  As we drive out of town, the rain starts to get really heavy.  We hit the main road to Victoria, as we approach the border there are these signs about preparing to stop, not for any border checkpoint, just roadworks in the end.  There seems to be an SES truck checking out something entering SA, but for us it’s clean sailing.  

Past hundreds more pine plantations, one even seemed to have a resident Emu, and after about 100km we finally arrive in Portland.  It’s pretty clear this is an industrial town.  None of the van parks look great, so we pick the free RV site in the middle of town.  There is only one other van here, but the owners appear out.  We park up a bit in front of them and have a bit of lunch.  The more I think about it, the more I realise that we are actually a bit too close, I’d be annoyed if I came back to find someone parked up where we were.  So we hitch up and move to find another level spot, the field is pretty soft and waterlogged, but we manage.    

I’m looking at the itinerary and the surroundings. I realise this place isn’t that great, particularly with all the rain and cold. Port Fairy, which would have to be nicer, is only another 75km up the road. It’s only just gone 2pm.  So I broach the subject with Justine .…  The idea of stopping for two nights in a row at Port Fairy does appeal, so we hitch up for the third time today and are out in record time.

We have a bunch of R’s – Rain and Rainbows, Liam counts 9, we even catch a double rainbow at one stage.

We arrive in Port Fairy, there are two van parks we think will be OK, we drive past the first one, the Gardens, seems nice enough, but we’ll take a look at the Big 4 as the kids will like that.  We take the scenic route out via the lake and it ends up being a 6km diversion to the Big4.   It looks OK, so we pull in. A sign in the window says “no sites available”. Justine goes in to check anyway – with all the rain, most of the sites are waterlogged so they can’t use them, bugger. Then we can’t reverse out of the driveway onto the road, so we have to do a drive through of the park just to get out of there!  300mts up the road is the Discovery Park, so pull in there.  Same thing, basically waterlogged.  Back to the Gardens, they have some sites, they’re pretty wet and boggy too, but we find the driest one we can.    

After the concerns here, the next stop was meant to be a campground.  They claim the only time they are booked out is Easter, but with this weather, and being school holidays, who knows.  We checked a couple of days ago and the camp site near Cape Otway, a place called Aire River West was booking out fast.   I think we have booked the 3rd least crappy site, but only time will tell.    While I’m keen on getting back to camping, it seemed prudent to secure something, so we’ve book into the caravan park at Port Campbell for 3 nights.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *