We’ve just returned from a family long weekend visit to Warrnambool. We left after work on Thursday and rented a holiday house for three nights.

It was a lovely three-bedroom house with a view of the ocean.

On Friday we did some shopping, had lunch, an afternoon nap (love those), went swimming and Juliet and I went out for dinner.

My cousin and his family arrived from Geelong on Saturday. Bernie and Marlita have twins, Thomas and Megan, just six months younger than Jim and Maggie.

Warrnambool is exactly half way between Geelong and Mount Gambier (189km from both), so it was a good meeting place.

The weather was better on Saturday, with hardly any breeze. That’s unusual for windy Warrnambool and we made the most of it by enjoying an afternoon on the beach at Stingray Bay along the breakwater.

We had a barbecue at the lake that evening near the children’s playground and then got shipwrecked.

That’s the sound and light show at Flagstaff Hill (pictured above on dusk) re-enacting the wreck of the Loch Ard in 1878.

It was a fantastic experience, very well created using laser technology outdoors. Juliet actually got seasick!

The show starts on dusk, which means 9pm in February. That was stretching it for sleepy little ones.

The boys were fine, but Megan and Maggie both got sleepy and were a little scared. I carried Maggie most of the way.

A lot of disgruntled Mount Gambier people compare the city adversely with Warrnambool. There is some merit in the exercise.

I remember visiting Warrnambool 20 years ago and it was nowhere near the dynamic modern city it is today.

It has the advantage of a waterfront and beach. The CBD is also much more compact.

Mount Gambier’s shopping is just as good, but it’s more spread out because Commercial Street is so long and narrow.

Warrnambool has footpaths on both sides of the street in residential areas. Many Mount Gambier streets don’t have any. There were plenty of rubbish bins too. It amazes me how few bins there are along Mount Gambier streets.

Mount Gambier’s tourism potential should be just as strong, if not stronger.

The Shipwrecked tours at Flagstaff Hill were both booked out (maybe 200 people). Warrnambool is off the main highway between Adelaide and Melbourne, just like Mount Gambier, and it doesn’t have an iconic natural attraction like the Blue Lake.

Mount Gambier doesn’t have an iconic man-made attraction like Flagstaff Hill, which is perhaps the city’s weakness.

Here are some pictures of the children (click to enlarge):