I drove along the South Australian-Victorian border yesterday to see what the hard border looks like in South East SA (thread)
I begun on the coast near Piccaninnie Ponds, the closest road to the beach. I thought I might be able to walk up on the sand to the border to see where it meets the ocean (pictured: the wrong border watch for my purposes)
Alas, it wasn’t to be, with the Ponds outlet channel proving too big a hurdle to get onto the sand (it’s deeper than it looks!)
The most southerly SA border police checkpoint is on the Glenelg River road, a couple of minutes drive from the Victorian town of Nelson
Stand there for a few minutes and you’re bound to see a logging truck rattle past. SE SA and SW Victorian communities are entwined as two parts of the Green Triangle forest region.
Relevant side note- there was once a push to combine the two regions and separate from South Australia and Victoria (back in the 1860s). Read former ABC South East SA reporter Kate Hill’s story on “Princeland” https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.abc.net.au/article/7558092">https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp...
Heading north along Border Rd, I came swiftly to the community of Donovans which looks out onto the small section of the Glenelg River that South Australia claims
A lookout at Donovans shows South Australian shacks on one side the river. On the other side, the Glenelg National Park sprawls for as far as the eye can see (almost entirely Victorian).
The police checkpoint on one of the major roads into Mount Gambier- the Princes Hwy- has now been set up much closer to the border, amidst plantations. Over the last few weeks, the checkpoint was located on the city’s eastern fringe.
On the Wimmera Hwy at Hynam I met locals John and Sonja Pallant who said they’ve been donating firewood to police at that checkpoint since April
Further north I stopped off to check out a curious footnote to this border story- Mullinger Swamp. The swamp is cut in half by the border.
For more on the (historical) legal battle between South Australia and Victoria over the border line, you can read this article, again reported by Kate Hill
https://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2014/10/03/4099668.htm">https://www.abc.net.au/local/pho...
https://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2014/10/03/4099668.htm">https://www.abc.net.au/local/pho...
A 39m tall tree stands on the (South Australian) side of the swamp- it was declared the winner of a competition by the ABC and Greening Australia in the 90s to find SE SA’s largest living red gum