Day 8 - Barossa Valley & Mt. Lofty Botanic Gardens

Monday. Time to head home.

But navigating via the Barossa Valley.

Morning tea at Linke's German/Austrian Bakery and tea rooms in Nurioopta. The photo of the beautifully gnarled grape vine is from there - another town with verandahs and grapevines.

From there we meandered through more wine label towns and to Hahndorf.

Harndorf is everything everyone has said - wonderful mainstreet full of craft shops and food shops with a strong german influence.

After lunch in Hahndorf we continued on to Adelaide, and found we were far to early for our flight so detoured to visit Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens.

As the name implies, the gardens are quite steep, built on the side of Mt. Lofty. We parked at the top, but that didn't mean we could walk down and avoid the steep climbs since we had to get back to the car.

The photo is of the view from the lookout at the top. And the next one is also from the lookout but of a section of the gardens.

One of the good things about the gardens on this slope is that I figure some of the planting ideas should be replicable on our slope.

I really liked this section with the vase shaped mediterranean shrubs along the side of the pathway, and the sweeps of ground covering plants.

And I also loved the colour of this Japanese maple (Acer palmatum var. heptobum 'Osakuzuki'). The photo really doesn't do the colour justice. I think it's the cold, and Kinglake certainly has that.

Finally we made our way to the airport, grounded the rental car, and we were sufficiently early still that they put us on an earlier flight home.

Great trip. Great to be home.

Day 7 (afternoon) Telowie Gorge Conservation Park

Telowie Gorge Conservation Park is in the Southern Flinders Ranges, not far off the road between Port Pirie and Port Germaine.
The blurb on the information sign tells us that this gorge was cut through the ranges by the Telowie Creek.
I have to assume it sometimes has a lot more water in it than it did when we visited. We found a few water holes, but a lot of it was just dry stone creek bed.



Back to the blurb ...

"Other features include the ridgeline, slopes,
gullies, creeks and plains. These create a variety of habitats. Plants and animals from both the southern temperate and arid regions are represented in this Park".

Day 7 (morning) Port Pirie & Port Germaine

On Sunday morning we headed back to check out some of the towns that the train had passed through on Friday, along Spencer Gulf. Port Pirie is a very industrial town, built around the port, but it has some beautiful old buildings in the central part of town - commerical buildings with verandahs and verandah posts still intact, and stone houses with old fashioned gardens.
This photo is the old part of the port. All the newer part is private property and out of limits to the public.

Then we continued north along Spencer Gulf, with the southern end of the Flinders' Ranges in the distance.

Next stop was Port Germaine. We were intrigued by the commentary on the train that had explained that Port Germaine has the longest wooden pier in the southern hemisphere. It had been built to support the farmers and graziers moving onto the land to the north of Spencer Gulf during the end of the 19th century. For the first few years they had good returns and needed a faster way to get produce and animals to market than taking them all the way to Adelaide by road.
Unfortunately the boom wasn't sustainable. The soil was poor and once the initial nutrients were used there was nothing to replenish the soil. Plus the few good years were followed by drought - the more normal state for this part of the country.

But the pier survived. You can see why it had to be so long - Spencer Gulf is very shallow at this point, and when the tide is out it is out a very, very long way.

Like so much of this part of the country, there are beautiful old buildings made of local stone. This one is the pub in St. Germaine, right opposite the start of the pier.

Days 5 & 6 - Adelaide and Clare Valley

Next morning we woke approaching Port Augusta and the "steel triangle". The train continued down through Port Germaine, Port Pirie and while we enjoyed breakfast we continued "stop - start" through more familiar landscapes - we'd left the desert behind somewhere overnight.

The train made its way through the outskirts of Adelaide and to the new Adelaide Railway Station on the edge of the parklands surrounding the centre of the city. As well as the landscape becoming familiar, so had the weather - it was rainy and cold when we arrived at the station. Unfortunately our arrival also coincided with a rally by bikie groups in central Adelaide that created gridlock in the city. So the queue for taxis was long and not getting much shorter as the taxis couldn't get out to the station.

Eventually we caught a city shuttle bus and the driver obligingly tried to get each group of passengers as close to their destinations as he could. We were heading for the car hire office in central Adelaide. (For future reference, we might have been better opting to pick up the car at the Airport office). Eventually we collected the Falcon sedan and were on our way ... in the wrong direction ... I'd got "turned around" between the rental office and the multi-story carpark where the car was parked.

After a scenic drive round the perimeter of central Adelaide - Parliament House, Casino, University, Arts Centre - and pointing in the right direction again, we headed north and a couple of hours later (and a couple of hours late) we made it to Clare.


The B&B was in the grounds of a working farm and vineyard. The rooms were in a converted dairy and other outhouses - lovely local stone with this great pergola covered with grape vines (of course!)

The door opened directly into the bedroom, with brass bed, and then a door though to the living/kitchen (with all the makings for breakfast and a couple of bottles of local wine and a combustion coonara-style heater), and another door through to the bathroom. All beautifully done and fully equipped.

Next day (Saturday) we drove back into Clare. The main street is so very pretty and the weather was gorgeous - blue skies and sunshine. Most of the buildings, both old and new, have verandahs with posts and these have strands of wire for the ubiquitous grapevines to grow on. And in early May the grapevines were starting to change colour and really added to the picturesque appearance. This first weekend of May was also their gourmet Food Festival, so there were samplings and sales of cheeses, olives, breads, ...

And the first weekend of May was also the Antique Fair in Burra. So that is where we headed Saturday afternoon. Burra is a small but old town (made me think of Rutherglen), so was perfect for an antique fair. The fair was spread three venues, plus the regular antique stores. And there was a quilt show! (What a surprise!)

The "antiques" were fascinating - probably a sign of my age? Do people actually buy "antique" Fanta cans, and "It's Time" badges, and all manner of things from my childhood, teenage years, and even more recent times. Alarming! (I was reminded of visiting Henry Handel Richardson's restored childhood home in Chiltern with my mother and grandmother, and they recognised and commented on almost every item in the kitchen - mangle, meat mincer, etc.)

I found and bought a Brownie Downing wall plate that the seller carefully wrapped in tissue, bubble wrap, then newspaper to ensure it would get back to Melbourne in one piece. Mum had broken one when it's hanging string perished and broke and it fell off the wall, but I couldn't remember which one had broken. (Unfortunately it wasn't the one that I bought - so she now has two identical plates!) I also bought some antique buttons.