Day 8 -Mt. Gambier to Beachport 87 Km / 54 Miles

As we rolled into Beachport there was a little car park and beach access on the left. Beachport is on a small peninsula that juts 3 K into the Southern Ocean. From the beach access I could view to the right the small village with a long pier in the bay of the peninsula, to the left the southern coastline of Australia extended as far as I could see. It was no longer the rugged and rocky coastline we had seen earlier. It was now low sandy beaches with dunes extending inland. Moreover, as I looked eastward, I could see very little signs of man’s encroachment. Somewhere I read that nearly 90% of Australia’s population lives along the coast. Much of the population is clustered near the larger cities, Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide leaving much of its vast coastline sparsely populated With a population of just 24 million people it has roughly 14 million less people than the State of California. During my walk along the Beachport bay at nighttime I saw very little light along the coast to the east.

The rest day made all the difference to Joe and I, we felt marked improvement, David not so much. We had asked around about the conditions of the roads west from Mt. Gambier. We could expect traffic to the small town of Millicent with some truck traffic but not nearly the volume we had experienced earlier. The popular consensus among those from Victoria was that South Australia’s roads were built and maintained to better standards than Victoria’s. David was feeling a bit under the weather so we decided to take it a bit easier today. We followed the B1 west from Mt. Gambier and began to realize the improvements. Traffic decreased noticeably the farther we got from Mt. Gambier. There were rolling hills but nothing too much of a challenge, though I am sure we are getting stronger as well.

From Millicent we angled south following B101 along the coast. It was practically deserted and the farther west we rode the flatter it became. We made it into Beachport shortly after 3:00 PM after battling the same persistent headwinds we have encountered every day.