Day 19: Sunken Gardens, Mary MacKillop and a Dead Sea Experience

The Cave Gardens

Today was busy and there was lots to see. Although we started off with some rain, this passed over and the day turned out quite fine and cool.

Our first stop was in Mount Gambier at the Cave Gardens and the Umpherston Sinkhole. The former is exactly as it supposes to be: a cave with decorative gardens that have been planted and lovingly kept up. The Umpherston Sinkhole used to be a cave...until the roof fell in and somebody had the good idea to make a garden in the hole. It is quite a deep hole too.

The Umpherston Sinkhole

The most amazing thing is that there are lots of caves underneath the city and underground rivers that flow through them. Where will the next sinkhole appear?

A 50km drive up the road to Penola was well worth the trek to see the Mary MacKillop Interpretation Centre. Penola is where Mary MacKillop grew up and started her first Catholic school for poor, rural children. I learnt quite a bit about her there, and I hadn't realised before just how interconnected her life was with Julian Tenison Woods. I also didn't know that JTW was quite the scientist, who wrote a number of books and publications about the flora and fauna of Australia. The displays were all very informative and there were quite a few artifacts to look at. The school house that MM and JTW built is still standing and we had a look around inside.

Mary MacKillop's second school house for her first school (the first school house was a converted stable)

The stained glass window in the St Joseph's Church

Duncan in MM's school room

From here we set off to Beachport with two aims in mind. The first, to walk along the 722m jetty that seems to go forever out into the sea. When it was originally built, it was almost 1.5kms long, but was shortened by a storm at some point in it's 100yr existence.


The second aim was to find and have a swim in the Pool of Siloam, which is seven times saltier than the sea. This is similar to the Dead Sea in that you can float in the water quite easily as people are very buoyant in such salty water. Callum was brave enough to swim out to the pontoon, while Andrew pouted because he wanted to also but was kept in the shallows.

Floating in the Pool of Siloam

80kms later we were back in Mount Gambier, where the sun was out and the Blue Lake bluer than yesterday. So, more photos were called for, after which Duncan and the boys went for a walk up to Centennial Tower. They saw a snake en route, so I am pleased that I sat that one out!

On the Centennial Tower walk

Moving day tomorrow...Naracoorte and some special caves await us...