Portland, Australia – March 8

fire aftermath

Pouring rain while sailing in, then overcast, then sunny, very windy, 19 degrees

Apparently those in charge of the weather didn’t care for my plans to spend the morning on our balcony. Our new balcony hasn’t seen too much action since we moved into this new room – maybe in the end it won’t as our itinerary seems to be

fire aftermath

changing by the day.

Our 7 sea days after Australia en route to Sri Lanka have now turned into 8, as we are definitely skipping Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka said we were welcome to dock, but no crew or passengers could go ashore…nope, the ship decided that wasn’t acceptable, so we are spending one more day at sea…yea! and an extra day in Cochin, India which is an overnight. So far, we’re good with

Glenelg river

that. Not that it would matter if we weren’t. This is the current plan…I suspect things will change tomorrow, as things are changing, and then changing, and then changing.

Portland is the first settlement of the state of Victoria about 200 years ago. It is very small, about 11000 inhabitants call Portland home, most of these people are employed by the town’s aluminum smelter.

A river cruise (we can’t get enough of water apparently) and then a cave

Glenelg river

tour was where we were headed just after lunch. We prepared for cool weather, but in the end didn’t need to be. Once the sun came out it was lovely, still windy, but I think it is always windy here…anytime I see wind turbines, I suspect it’s always windy.

The journey from Portland to Nelson, where we boarded the river boat,

holiday shacks

was about an hour. It was interesting to see the Australian countryside. Much of this area is planted with pine tree plantations. This is like of funny to look at, row upon row of pine trees, all exactly the same size. What wasn’t funny was when we saw row upon row of these trees burned by the recent fires. I tried to

holiday shacks

get some photos from the bus, but bus pics are never the best.

As we were driving a few times a few emus ran across the road in front of the bus. These are about the

caves

size of deer we would see at home. If we didn’t see them closely, we could easily have mistaken them for deer.

The cruise of the river Glenelg took about 1

admiring the huge cave formations

hour. Along the way we saw birds, trees, more trees, some holiday shacks and some other boats. Much of the river that we saw was cut into somewhat of a gorge…cool looking.

caves

At the end of the boat ride was the Princess Margaret Rose Cave. This system of caves is

caves

about 800000 years old, discovered by a couple of kids about 100 years ago. We didn’t travel very far into the caves, the ceiling of the caves was very high, so no crouching or bending was required.

One interesting thing we learned about in these caves are helictites. Most of the

caves

formations in caves we’ve visited form from the ceiling down. However, helictites form

bottom has met with the top

sideways or even upwards. These helictites are thought to form through capillaryy action or by the slightest breeze inside the cave.

Today had a very fall feeling about it…sunny but cool, windy and the shadows felt like fall…

burned plot of trees

weird when it’s March.

Portland beach