We passed through Hahndorf again to snap a few photos and stock up on mettwurst and cheese for a road trip down the Limestone Coast, famous for red earth, red wine and rock lobster.  We bought pies from Potbelly Pies for later.  It seems pies are an easy, relatively cheap meal choice everywhere but home.  Donny’s thinking of starting a new craze when we get back.  He chose beef, cheese and bacon; I had lamb with rosemary and mint. 

Soon we head down the Princes Highway and into the Coorong.  The Coorong is an area of coastal dunes, beach and lagoon/wetlands  and lakes running 200 km along the coast.  We enjoyed the scenery, which reminded us a lot of the Outer Cape (Cape Cod) in some spots, and stopped to eat our pies.  There were lots of birds flying, wading and floating, and small creatures scuttling around the scrub. The area has been home to the Ngarrindjeri people for some 6000 years.  They are involved in Park management and in giving educational visits to important Aboriginal sites of cultural and scientific significance in the area.

Our next stop was Kingston, where we were greeted by Larry the Lobster. This giant red icon was supposed to be built for a rooftop, designed in feet, but mistakenly constructed in meters, so relegated to a spot on the ground.  We also did a quick geocache near the Analematic Sundial, apparently one of only 8 in the world!  You stand on the month corresponding to the date, and look to the rocks placed in an arc in front of you, and you can tell the time using your own shadow. 

Further south in Robe, we looked around the beaches and took a hike up to the Old Gaol, which held prisoners from 1860-1881.  Some of the outer walls were reinforced with steel boiler plates from one of the many shipwrecks in the area.  The striped cone-shaped Obelisk was nearby out on a cliff at cape Dombey, visible to ships 20 km at sea, and Doorway Rock sat below, pummeled by churning waves.  We made a trek down to another beach, in the Little Dip Conservation area.  This was a very pretty spot, but the clouds were rolling in, and rain threatened, so we went to find a place for the night.  We ended up in the local YHA (youth hostel) which was set in a historic 1880s sandstone manor on a lake.  The Italian marble fireplace in the library still gets lit when it’s cool, and the bookshelf there itself is listed as a historic piece.  The ceilings were high, and there were a number of other original details that made it a really cool spot to spend the night.  We got dinner in the pub of the historic Caledonian Inn.  The prices were reasonable, and the fish and chips and seafood basket were tasty, as were the beers on draught.  The evening was finished back at the hostel with several heated rounds of rummy.

The other interesting thing we learned in Robe was about the over 16000 Chinese who came ashore here in the 1850s, avoiding the head-tax they would be charged by the Victorian government had they landed there.  The immigrants were headed for the goldfields in Victoria, and had to make the journey from Robe over 200 miles by land.  We visited a shallow well later in the day used on this journey.  It’s said that many tree trunks along the route were marked with Chinese characters, providing information and warnings for those who came behind.