So we spent Sunday lazing around Port Parham. We went for a
walk around town, it didn’t take very long, then we played with a few new gizmo’s
we’d gotten for the camper. Asides from our banquet breakfast of pancakes, food
was fairly average because of our lack of it, but we made it work. When Monday called
around, it was time to leave Parham in search of food and wine! We headed
towards the Barossa with a quick stop off at Gawler to resupply. The next stop
and potentially my favourite of the Barossa, was Jacob’s Creek. We were treated
to a range of different wines and some lovely breadsticks and found ourselves
quite content. The grounds here were quite nice as well. Next stop was Tanunda
for some lunch, along the way we passed field after field of wine grapes and of
course several wineries. They have 80 odd in the Barossa. After Tanunda, we
went to Maggie Beer’s shop, where we sampled almost everything we could find, and
then we sampled some more! We then headed over to Angaston, a cute little town.
We bought (and tasted) some cheese, checked out Angas Park Fruits Shop – which if
you’re in town and have a lot of money it’s well worth a stop – then went to Yalumba
Wines. We warmed ourselves by the fire, tasted a fair amount of their range-
their tawny is to die for- and then we said goodbye. We chose not to overextend
ourselves or our wallets that day so decided to head north. We went through
Nuriootpa and some beautiful countryside and settled at a rest area in Tarlee.
A town quite literally in the middle of nowhere.
The next morning it was time for the Clare Valley – more wine!
After driving again through some beautiful countryside we ended up in Seven
Hills, where we visited Seven Hills Jesuit Wines. Here we explored a very old
church, a crypt and the winery cellar. There was also a range of displays
showing numerous items that had been used in the winery over many years. After
such an adventure we were keen to wet our whistles, so headed on over to
Knappstein winery and brewery. An absolutely superb choice as we could taste
and buy wine and beer – the best of both worlds. So after being well stocked up
in the liquor department, we left the Clare before lunch in the hope of
settling down somewhere a bit nicer than a rest area for the evening. For lunch we stopped at a park in Yacke with
potentially the coolest picnic tables ever, we also took this opportunity to
stretch our legs and play in the park. Then we were off!
Sure enough we found some where quite remarkable to stay, in
fact we found Mount Remarkable National Park. The park had flushing loos, hot
showers, fire pits and plenty of shady gums. We settled in, spotted some roo’s
and emus and had a rather lovely happy hour with all of our goodies from the
previous days adventures. The next morning we enjoyed some sunshine, for a nice
change! I even got some washing done. After that we went for a lovely bush walk
through some hills. Mount Remarkable is actually the southern end of the
Flinders Ranges, so there’s no shortage of hills and mountains around. When we
finished our walk we decided to start a
fire early and subsequently had the most delicious camp-oven-cooked lamb stew,
followed by some perfectly cooked damper – all in all a really good feed!
The next morning we had to go to Port Augusta, as our Hulkie
was booked in for a service. Sure enough it was raining again, so we packed up
in the wet and headed north. After the Hulkie was dropped off we had some time
to kill in town. So we checked out the info centre, some shops and ended up
hiding in the library most of the day. The weather was miserable. That
afternoon we picked up our baby and stayed in a nearby van park. With the wind
howling and the rain pelting down, we decided it was an indoors afternoon and
night and as a result watched a ridiculous amount of Underbelly. The next
morning we had our Hulkie booked in for some new tyres (which by the way look
very suave). We spent the morning walking around Port Augusta, got our baby
back and headed South. I needed to stay in reception for a phone interview that
afternoon, so we headed towards Whyalla. We were going to stay at Lowly Point,
but the place was about as dreary as its name, so we continued on to Fitzgerald
Bay, via a very muddy coastal road that was more of a 4wd track at the time.
Fitzgerald Bay was a lot nicer. There was ocean views, lots of bush scrub and
some very weird toilets (the doors were latticed so if someone was at the right
angle outside they could see you on the loo!), most importantly there was no
gusty winds and it was flat. So we set up camp. Oh, I should mention it was
right near a military base. We spent that afternoon listening to gun shots a
plenty.
That night we decided we’d been rushing around too much and
the weather was once again getting us down. We noted we had several things to
do before we were prepared to go “up” the middle, so we made a radical decision
to drive back to Mount Remarkable – to hot showers, flushing loos that had
proper doors, fire places and generally a nice view. And that’s where we are
now. We’re slowly ticking off our things to do list and just taking a couple of
days to relax. I think the weather agreed with us because since we arrived back
here it has been sunny. And we’re loving it.
Lesson of the week: sometimes it’s good to relax
No comments:
Post a Comment