I now like the break between sporting seasons. When I was young I used to hate it. There was no football or cricket to watch and the weekends seemed to go forever.

Now we have respite from playing taxi to kids’ soccer and hockey.

Today we went for a drive to Millicent, Southend and Beachport.

Pictures from the trip can be seen here. It’s 50km from Mount Gambier to Millicent, which is still inland, then about 20km to Southend and and an extra 10km to Beachport.

We stopped first at Lake McIntyre, which is apparently a reclaimed quarry. It’s 1.3km to walk around the lake and there’s a pleasant picnic area.

We then drove to Southend, which is a small holiday town with not many facilities. There’s a sheltered beach which looks inviting for summer.

The exposed coastline around there is windswept and rugged, as the picture of Rainbow Rocks illustrates.

There are some nice walks around Southend and I hope to visit there again in better weather.

Our next stop was Beachport, where we had lunch at the “boutique” Bompas Hotel (pictured). There was a nice view of the jetty from our table and the kids were able to play across the road in a small park.

Beachport has a population of 400, but I imagine it’s pretty busy in summer. There are surf beaches and sheltered swimming areas.

Lunch was terrific and we’ll definitely visit there again.

On the way back we stopped at the Tantanoola cave.

It cost $24.50 for a family pass to see a cavern with various formations. Personally I did not think it was anywhere near as interesting as the Princess Margaret Rose Cave we visited in July. It was worth a look though.

The cute picture of Jim and Maggie at the top was taken at Lake McIntyre. They had fun climbing a tree, until Maggie discovered it was infested with ants.

There is a lot to see within 100km of Mount Gambier and we plan to visit as many places as possible.

The break between sporting seasons is a good time to make a few trips.

Summers here are notoriously fickle, but we hope to get enough warm weather at the right times to enjoy some time on the beach.

We were fortunate to have good spring weather today, just a few showers and windy, but it turned cold and rain set in when we returned to Mount Gambier.

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