Coonawarra to Portland

21/3/2015

It was a very cold night – think the temperatures dropped to about 6 degrees and I stayed in bed a bit longer to wait for the sun and temperatures to rise.

Doing another Intermittent Fasting session, I had a creamy Bulletproof Coffee in the morning for breakfasts and an awesome chat with my neighbors, the German girl, Japanese girl and the guy from Sweden about life, traveling, cultural differences and a bit more. We had a lot of fun and told stories about our lives. Learned a new word from them that they got from the supervisors where they were picking fruit: 'french shopping' apparently means shoplifting. Don't know why, but French people don't have a good reputation in rural Australia.

In Mount Gambier, the second largest city in South Australia (around 25,000 inhabitants), I visited the blue lake – a volcanic lake that turns to deep blue colour during the summer, but turns to a greyish colour during winter.

The Blue Lake in Mount Gambier

Really blue

Next stop was the library to post yesterdays blog post. I got quite aggravated because the WiFi connection was bad, dropped out and was slow like in prehistoric (in regards to broadband) times. Don't know if the empty stomach caused parts of this bad mood, need to monitor that at my next IF session.

I quickly visited the sinkhole next to the library and the park and then had a lovely picnic in the park after 17 hours of fasting. Beanhunter (iPhone app) suggested two coffee shops, and I walked to the closer one and was quite happy with the cappuccino (that I boosted with some organic grass fed butter) and the Toblerone cheese cake. I really need to stop eating cakes but I'm currently easily tempted by sweets that I've never tasted before.

The Sinkhole in downtown Mount Gambier - all withered in the limestone

Hard to see but there are many caves beneath Mount Gambier

Beautiful rose garden in the park next to the sinkhole

Afterwards I drove to the Umpholster sinkhole – huge one, have a look at the photos:

Umpholser sinkhole - look at the palm trees

Formation of the sinkhole

Look at the depth of it - there are two women standing down there

Different layers in the limestone

The same palm trees, now photographed from the bottom with a woman close to one of them

I drove down the C192, a small country road to Nelson, a little coastal village where the Glenelg river (a different one than the one in Adelaide!) meets the sea. Nice village, and I thought about staying but decided to drive to Portland – a slightly bigger town about 70km away. A few kilometers before I arrived in Nelson I crossed the border from South Australia to Victoria and with it, crossed into the next time zone, which is another 30 minutes difference.

Glenelg river - nice for canoeing

Glenelg river next to boat ramp

Portland has around 9,600 inhabitants, multiple caravan parks (I chose a small one with WiFi) and looks like a nice place.

After checking in I visited Aldi for a quick browse and buying some fresh vegetables for dinner. Quite good prices for most of the things, and they got a little bottle shop in there as well – almost like back in Europe where you can buy beer, wine and spirits at almost every shop & fuel station!

Continuing to read Marcus Aurelius “Meditations”, I did a bit of background reading as well and stumbled over an interesting article in AEON magazine, titled “Why Stoicism is one of the best mind hacks ever”, quite a good read! Subtitles: Indifference is power and As legions of warriors and prisoners can attest, Stoicism is not grim resolve but a way to wrest happiness from adversity

Marcus Aurelius followed this philosophy, as did Epictetus, Seneca and probably quite a lot more others. The article quotes a section from Urban Dictionary, defining the word stoic and giving a practical example (which I found hilarious!):

stoic
Someone who does not give a shit about the stupid things in this world that most people care so much about. Stoics do have emotions, but only for the things in this world that really matter. They are the most real people alive.
Group of kids are sitting on a porch. Stoic walks by. 
Kid – ‘Hey man, yur a fuckin faggot an you suck cock!’ 
Stoic – ‘Good for you.’ 
Keeps going.

Distance traveled today: 167km