“ Seen as a major shipping port for both river and sea transport , Goolwa was originally planned as the state capital .” ciated with it . Once under a great expanse of water , the limestone was created by billions of tiny sea creatures depositing their remains on the ocean floor . These deposits have created the most beautiful white sand beaches , framed by perfect blue waters . The beaches are some of Australia ’ s finest and yet remain relatively untouched . Inland the limestone has been eroded in places to create spectacular caves , some of which are World Heritage Listed due to the unprecedented amount of fossil deposits . Astounding , is the only way to comprehend that one of the caves at Naracoorte has over 4,000 pieces of ancient bone per cubic metre . The reconstructed remains of extinct mega-fauna are astonishing .
The southern tip of Lake Bonney gave an idea as to what we could expect . The track between the lake and the ocean was nothing more than 30 kilometres of fine , white , powdery sand . I desperately wanted to head this way but thought otherwise when advised by a local that the track was in the worst condition he had ever seen and that many better suited machines were struggling with the deep sand . We headed to the east of the lake then continued north through farming country , both cattle and turbine electricity generators were abundant .
Robe , on the southern shore of Guichen Bay , was the destination for the night and as soon as we got there I couldn ’ t wait to get away . The town , with a permanent population of around 2,000 people is beautifully set with historic period buildings however , at this time of the year the population had swelled to over 20,000 , mostly drunken tourists . One night here would be more than enough , thank you .
The following morning vindicated our decision to spend no more time in Robe . Over a delicious breakfast , at the Robe Bakery , we noticed that the streets were strewn with broken beer and wine bottles . The partying had gotten out of hand the previous night . We moved on and followed the coast to first Cape Jaffa and then Kingston SE , the two towns linked by the unlikeliest of reasons .
A striking feature of Kingston SE is a steel framed lighthouse that sits amongst the houses on the towns foreshore . Keenly interested in this sort of history I ventured in for a closer look , quickly discovering that the lighthouse is not original to Kingston SE . Known as the Cape Jaffa lighthouse it was originally placed on Margaret Brock Reef 13km offshore from Cape Jaffa after a ship was wrecked there in the 1870 ’ s . Unbelievably two lighthouse keepers and their families would live on the lighthouse and its platform at any one time , their only contact with the outside world being by row-boat . I couldn ’ t quite get my head around the fact that at some point as many as 12 people lived in isolation on this tiny platform .
With more advanced technologies came the demise of the lighthouse and rather than leave it rotting in the ocean , the National Trust decided to have it dismantled and re-erected in the larger town of Kingston SE , where it resides today , a monument to much harder times .
Travelling further north we were amongst The Coorong by following Old Coorong Road , a well maintained , compacted limestone track . The con-
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