Robe to Penola

Tuesday 12th March 2013

I took a few photos of Robe before leaving. It's a charming historic port, and a popular holiday destination. This is the Robe Hotel, where I stayed.

This is a monument to the explorers Flinders and Baudin, who each explored the area independently in the early 1800s. In the background is the harbour:

There are some historic buildings, and a typical "Digger monument" War Memorial:

The temperature was even hotter than yesterday. By 0900 it was already nearly 30C and headed for a maximum forecast of 39C. And like yesterday, there was a long way to go with no services en route. I was heading inland along the Clay Wells Rd and  Penola was the next town, over 100kms away.

So I stocked up with several large bottles of water, enough Powerade powder to render the whole lot isotonic, and reconciled myself to the prospect of drinking a lot of very warm sickly fluid throughout the day.

The road to Penola was long, flat, and rather boring with very little of interest on the way, and also virtually no shade. There were a few forest plantations but they were too far from the road to provide any protection from the blazing heat:

The Kangaroo Inn, about half way to Penola, had not provided any refreshment to travellers for some considerable time:

The only other thing of interest on the route was this hollowed out old tree, which had been used as a posting box by early settlers:





I reached Penola around 1500 and after a refreshing drink of cold water kindly provided by the tourist office, I checked into the historic Royal Oak Hotel on the main street.

Penola is in the heart of the Coonawarra wine region so of course I had to head out on a brief ride to check out a few local wineries, which were all excellent.

Then I walked around the Penola Heritage Trail, looking at the many historic buildings that are very well preserved here:

Distance today - 119kms, total so far 484kms.

Here's a map of the route so far, which I intend to update every day. If I can discover a bit more about using Google Maps I will try and embed the map on the blog page so readers won't have to click on the link.