Australia Travel Diary 3 - So Many Bugs and the Pink, Pink Lake

During our trip around Melbourne, we didn't choose the Great Ocean Road self-drive that every tourist must tick off their list. The reason is that I get car sick; as soon as I get in a car, it's like someone cast a sleep spell on me, and I sleep through the whole journey without seeing the scenery... So, we opted for a less popular route, the Gold Rush Town + Pink Lake. The Pink Lake is closer to Adelaide, and it takes about 8 hours to drive there and back from Melbourne. But what young girl can resist the allure of pink, pink things? Once in the car, I just open and close my eyes, and before I know it, I'm there, I must go! In the morning, we first visited Sovereign Hill, a gold rush town. This place is a relic of the Australian gold rush of 1850 (?), and it has preserved many of the gold mining facilities from that time. You can also sign up for tours on-site, where local guides will explain the history of gold mining and take you deep underground to experience the gold mines (it's really dark, so I didn't take many photos). Since we visited on a weekday during the off-season and the weather wasn't great, it was overcast, which felt very calm. However, visiting a place that was once hot but now faded in such weather seemed quite fitting... Let me just say, Australia's mineral resources are truly abundant, not just gold mines. This is indeed a feng shui treasure land that relies on mining, agriculture, animal husbandry, tourism, and education to support a high-welfare developed country. I chatted with a local white Uber driver, and they only take orders from the Uber platform, casually earning about ten thousand yuan a week... I've also talked to many Didi drivers in China, they work themselves to death driving for so many platforms for over 10 hours a day, and they earn about the same amount in a month in Shanghai, which is really sigh-worthy. After driving for 4 hours, we encountered the legendary Pink Lake! On the road, we really saw a lot of kangaroos, and many kangaroos that had been hit and killed TT There's no definitive conclusion as to why the Pink Lake is pink, but it might be due to the microorganisms/bacteria it contains. The shores of the Pink Lake are white and saline, but what shocked me more than the visibly pink water was the shore teeming with bugs... ants, long strips of various indescribable creatures... The memes about Australia having lots of bugs that I saw online have now vividly entered my field of vision... There's a public toilet by the roadside, and looking at the dark mass in front of the toilet, I took a closer look, and yes, it was all insect corpses. I silently endured and returned to the car. My brave little sister ventured into the public toilet and came back to pat me calmly, saying it was good that I didn't go. There were probably tens of thousands inside. In summary, today I saw beautiful scenery, took some lovely photos, and even got a little braver. It was a happy day! In the next issue, I want to do a special on small animals, so stay tuned, dear UUs!