Day 2: Naturism is not Naturalism - or: sod 'Pants Off Friday', let's have 'Pants Off Monday'.

Route: Meningie-Parnya Point-Policeman's Point-Salt Creek-Kingston S.E.-Robe-Sunland Holiday Village
Distance covered: 244.0km

A little late with this entry, as I didn't have any mobile coverage last night. What started out to be a pretty ordinary day finished in a somewhat (completely) unexpected manner.

The first night passed relatively smoothly. I slept pretty well, although the temperature bordered on sinking too low for my sleeping bag. Tying the hood tightly around my head solved most of the temperature-related loss of sleep.

Set my alarm for 6:38, and only tossed and turned for around ten minutes before getting up. At just after 9:00 I was ready to depart, having discovered that my packing skills had dropped since leaving home.

Another day, another road. This one being of dirt.

Michael Jackson isn't dead. He's riding a scooter around Australia

As I set out for Robe, target for the day - and only a little over 200km - I chose to take the ride easy. As anybody who has drive the Meningie-Kingston stretch of the trip, itself around 145km, knows, it isn't much more exciting than I imagine driving across the Nullabor to be. So I chose to make a few detours for any tourist attraction on the way.

Coorong National Park 

Highlights of the day:

Pelican Point and its observatory. Other than for seagulls, there was no bird life in evidence until I spotted a group of pelicans circling far overhead.

Parnya Point - Highway to Hell('s Gate)

Parnya Point was more eventful. The peninsula juts into the Coorong, making for a narrow stretch of water that can apparently be hazardous, hich gives rise to its nickname, Hell's Gate. It was therefore appropriate that the road to the point I dubbed the 'Highway to Hell', as the road surface was intent on trying to send my scooter and me to Hades.

Salt Creek: site of Australia's first oil drilling well. Shame there was never any oil in the area.

Chinaman's Well: Landing point for Chinese arriving in the 1850s to head to the Victorian goldfields. The well is still standing; these holes are from where the sandstone bricks for it were cut.

Kingston S.E.: world-famous tourist destination, home of the Big Lobster. Is there anything else to say?

Robe: I arrived in Robe just after 17:00, some eight hours after I left Meningie. I'd covered around 220km by this time, with the detours adding around 30km to the trip's length. This is where the day took an unexpected turn. Having completed by grocery shopping, I headed to a caravan park, only to be told that it was completely full. Not a good sign, especially as it was suggested to me that the others were likely as full.

Letterboxes, Australian style

Whilst I pondered my fate, I refueled, having decided that it might be worthwhile to push through to Beachport, another 50km away. I asked at the petrol station about the likelihood of finding Beachport similarly busy. Having been told that it might be, it was then suggested to me that I could always try a holiday park - a naturalist site - along the route. Sure, they were down a dirt road, but it was unlikely to be full.

Despite my misgivings about the road surface I might encounter - fully justified, as it turned out - I set off for what I envisaged to be a hippy commune or an eco campsite. Ought to make for an entertaining evening.

Entertaining, yes, but not as I'd envisaged. Not naturalist, but rather naturist. As in nudist. It wasn't a hippy commune or eco campsite, but rather a nudist camp that I'd arrived at. Oh.

Completely buggered, I did choose to stay the night, rather than carry on further. After all, I am on an adventure... At least, due to the weather, there was far more clothing in use than I imagine is normal for a nudist camp. It was cold.

At work a few days ago I was advised that it wasn't Pants Off Friday. It wasn't yesterday either, because it was Monday...

Today's picture is dedicated to Beata, who unwittingly predicted my future by telling me that it wasn't 'Pants Off Friday' on last Tuesday: