Goolwa
Page 2
We took a weekend for ourselves late January early February and spent the weekend in the Goolwa/ Victor Harbor area. The photos on this page were mostly taken either on Granite Island or in Victor Harbor. The highlight of the day was the Oceanarium, which should be a must see and do on anyone's list if visiting the area. It doesn't cost a lot but is a fascinating way to see the area's ocean life.
You can click on the pictures for a larger view, then hit the backarrow to return to this page.
 On the way to Victor Harbor, we stopped at Port Elliot to take a look at Horseshoe Bay. |
 The weird thing is, another friend of ours took a picture of this same bay from a higher elevation the same day and ended up with one of those neat 'tropical island' type photos. It was overcast when we were there. |
 On the boat from Granite Island on our way to the 'Oceanarium', which is a floating platform in the middle of the bay. What this picture doesn't show is we arrived in Victor Harbor and booked our ticket for the Oceanarium and then had to walk across the tracks and over to the jetty on Granite Island within 20 minutes to make the tour. It was a hard walk, but we made it. Later photos show what a trek it really was! |
|
 The Kiosk on Granite Island. This is looking back at it from the boat. |
 The tram tracks we walked are in the distance (photo was taken from the boat). As you can see it was a long trek we had! |
 Part of the Oceanarium tour, this is me petting a little shark. He was very rough feeling. |
|
 Another view. There were also other fish in this tank, including a poisonous puffer fish. When I heard that, I took my hand out, but it was explained that it's really slow and when I saw it realised I wouldn't touch that ugly thing anyway! |
 The big tank with much bigger fish. There were several types of sharks plus other fish. This tank was the main part of the oceanarium. The smaller fish can come and go. |
 One of the coolest things about the Oceanarium is you walk down these steps and can actually view the fish from underwater. These and the next few pictures were taken from this part of the tour. |
|
 This shot shows a corner of the window we were looking through... and a shark! |
 More fish |
 Isn't this incredible? This is my favourite snap from our weekend. Rod's using it as his computer background. |
|
 More fish |
 Watching the fish through the windows. |
 One of the larger sharks came into our view! |
|
 This was taken through one of the other (not quite as clear) windows. |
 A different type of shark |
 Long view of the Oceanarium platform. The tanks on the other side of the large open area is where the small shark I touched was. The large open area is where all the fish from the previous pictures were. On the far side of the platform, you can see the boat we rode on to get to the platform. |
|
 You know, just when I started hearing/thinking of the tune from Jaws, the tour ended. I was on my way to a good sunburn here. |
 One of the big attractions with Victor Harbor and Granite Island are the horse drawn trams that ferry people across the water to the island. We walked the first time, but on the way back (after lunch and browsing the gift shop) we took the tram. This is one of the operators. |
 Clydesdale horse in front of the tram. The drivers move the horse from back to front instead of turning the tram around. The black line in the water (between the horse and tram) is the Oceanarium platform we were on. |
|
 We were on the top of the tram. This is looking back towards the Kiosk. Really I just wanted to show off my purple sun hat and great butterfly earrings. |
 This picture shows the Kiosk in the distance and the jetty where we got on the boat. It's to show how far we walked AFTER we crossed the long tram track to the island. |
 On the way back, we passed another tram coming from the Victor Harbor side. |
|
 The tram tracks across the bay look pretty small from this distance. The whole system was designed in the 1800's to transport goods to and from the island rather than having freight ships dock in the harbor. |
 We were up so high we could see right down into the water. This is looking from the very edge of the island looking towards Victor Harbor |
 On the tram, we actually saw 3 different types of stingray in the water. This (with the white around it) was the 2nd we saw. |
|
 This was the 3rd stingray we saw and the weird thing about this one is he was really REALLY close to the shore. Hmm! |
 Playing on a steam engine. It's OK. It was in the playground at Victor Harbor. |
 Rod had a go at being engineer |
|
 One of the Clydesdale horses resting. They work in shifts and apparently do 13km each day they work. |
 This horse's name is Misty. |
 The Tram timetable |
|
 Rod seeing what it's like to be a dolphin at the Whale Museum. |
 This was an incredible mural on the wall at the Whale Museum. |
 In the evening, Vicki and David arrived at our hotel to have dinner with us in the pub below our room. And thus ends the pictoral part of our short weekend in Goolwa and Victor Harbor. |
|
| We must have been tired on Sunday as we didn't take any piccies at all. We started the day with toast and coffee on the balcony while Vicki attended Church just across the street from us. Once we were packed and checked out of the hotel in the morning, we went to the Goolwa Market, expecting to run into Rod's brother Steve, but we didn't see him. A few SMS messages later we found he'd already been and was home. So we went to visit Viv and Steve and had a great cup of tea and visit. We then left and started towards home by way of Middleton, where we drove a long country road to visit Middleton winery. After a nice half hour chatting and tasting various wines (I did the tasting, as Rod isn't a wine drinker), we were back in the car again. We stopped off in Old Noarlunga (near where we were married a few years ago) and had a pub meal at the hotel there. I don't normally go for roast type meals, but the price was right. Once home and unpacked, we took a long siesta in the afternoon. | |||
This Page Last Updated: 22-Apr-2006
