Breakfast at the Comfort Inn on Raglan, Warnambool was interesting. We made a bit of a slow start, deciding to pack before we ate, and walked in to the dining room a moment before 9am when breakfast was supposed to finish. Our request for food at the bitching hour was met with an attitude worse than the slime and bugs in the pool there. At one point my son asked for some milk and was met with an audible harrumph from the waitress, who may have blushed under her exotic :indian: appearance when I warned my son that I'd heard her growl at him, but I don't think so.
We left Warrnambool, never to return, to continue along the coastline aiming for Kingston SE in South Australia. The weather was warm again and our first planned stop was Portland for lunch. Some time after riding through Port Fairy I noticed that the exhaust note on my bike had changed. I incorrectly diagnosed it as normal wearing in on the new pipes (it sounded good), the truth as we discovered about 10k's outside of Portland was that part of the exhaust system had snapped through where the headers joined the slip ons so the good sound was no muffling at all.
A call to Harley Assist offered a choice of having it carried to Horsham (dealership) or back to Melbourne with no ideas about how long that might take to organise. None of the choices were any good from the "trip" perspective so I opted to ride it to Portland where Mark at the Kawasaki dealership gave us a two hour timeframe to have the "fake Vulcan" welded up and better than new.
During the wait we had the time to explore Portland on foot and while, once again, the heat of the day was rising significantly, it wasn't too bad. The town is pretty, lots of cafes and we decided to have lunch the Port Of Call cafe overlooking the Port itself and some massive piles of woodchips ready for export but with nowhere to be exported to apparently. The Port if Call was also a very interesting place and recommended if you enjoy a great selection of religous reading while you eat or sip coffee.
After a bit of anti-histamine shopping we returned to see Mark who had almost finished the welding job. Half an hour later and a couple of hundred handed over we were on our way. We had originally planned to hug the coast and go to Kingston SE via Nelson and Port Macdonnell and Robe but the delay due to the mechanical issue forced us to rethink that and we decided to head up to Mt Gambier and have a look at the Blue Lake on the way through. Mount Gambier and the lake was worth it and we lamented not getting the opportunity to stay a little longer but we needed to keep going so we'd make it to Kingston SE and staying on the road made the heat easier to cope with too.
Kingston SE was a pretty looking village, but arriving at the Motel we were met with a rather pungent odour. What Heffy mistook for rocks lining the shoreling was actually piles of seaweed, doing what seeweed does when it lays in the sun....stinks. Booked in to the Lacepede Bay Motel with a great view of the water and seaweed our first priority was to once again get in a pool and cool off. Luckily this pool was very clean and managed to wash away the disturbing thoughts lingering from the pool at Warnambool yesterday.
Cooled off and showered we then went to the pub for a couple of drinks and I showed my supremacy over the young guys at Galaga. We had an excellent dinner at the Lacepede Bay Motel's restaurant and we found out that the seaweed was due to be removed the following week by someone who makes money from it... except for the year that the "greenies" stopped the removal and caused a rat plague. So it appears if you are going to visit Kingston SE, time it right.
We also got directions to Kingston SE's famous Big Lobster that we were going to visit on the way out of town tomorrow, with the forecast once again temps in the 40's.