Week 3 (10th - 16th April)

For the past week the weather has not been particularly good (cold and windy) and finding that the pillow of our inflatable mattress had sprung a leak did not help matters either! You would have laughed to have seen the terrible tangle we got into one night whilst trying to sleep with our heads at the other end of Skiv.For much of the week we have busy travelling through the hilly country that surrounds Adelaide including several of the well known South Australian wine growing regions, McLaren Vale (on the Fleurieu peninsula) and the Barossa valley. One of the most memorable villages we stopped at was Hahndorf, an old German settlement renown for its Bavarian charm, souvenir shops, craft outlets, bakeries, cafes and restaurants. We walked down the main street full of trees in autumn garb and grape vines, bought our favourite bratwurst and had tea and cake in a German tearoom. But it was John Graham’s leather shop that really took our fancy!

John Graham's Leather Shop

It comprised a scruffy looking tin shack with a fire going inside; uneven floors; cockatoos in a cage; John Williamson music playing in the background and the intoxicating smell of leather. Liked the character of the place so much that we bought a squashy hat and a new belt! The wording of the many hand written notices displayed left me in hysterics. This rhyme that will appeal to Otto…

“Mary had a little lamb,her father shot it deadand now it goes to school with herbetween two bits of bread”

Another Justy will appreciate - “as you grow old don’t worry about hairs growing out of your ears – it filters out the bullshit”She insists on cutting the hairs in my ears whenever she gives me a haircut!We based up in a cheap municipal caravan park at Eden Valley to explore the Barossa Valley. Close by we found a family tree - a hollow, gnarled old red gum tree, estimated to be 450-500 years old.

Herbig's tree- outside Springton

History has it that in 1855 a German, Freidrich Herbig, lived in it. Eventually married an illiterate peasant girl half his age and between them produced 16 children.A most enthusiastic Information Centre Officer told us about an intriguing “whispering wall”. The four of us decided we had to check that out!


Whispering wall

At a reservoir we found a 36m high concrete arch dam with its curved shape reflecting sounds obliquely off the wall over a distance of 140m. It was uncanny to clearly hear Lea whispering on the other side of the dam!In spite of the noise of the occasional grape trucks rumbling by in the night, our “cheap municipal caravan park” turned out trumps. We met a real character there – Dave, a short sighted, bearded Scot who had spent six years sweating in the heat of the opal fields in Andamooka in central South Australia. His little caravan surrounded by the tools of his trade including a home-made, solar-powered tumbling “machine” (the water tray in which the drum revolved was an old crisper tray from a defunct fridge!). Most fascinating of all was to learn that if repeatedly heated on an open flame, dipped in sugar water and washed, the uninteresting grey rocks that he called “concrete” contained the most marvellous array of colours (“rainbow matrix”) hidden within.


Raw and cooked opals

The colours are brought to the surface by polishing and shaping the “cooked rocks” on a grinder. We are hooked… Have decided to detour into the opal fields to see if we can strike it lucky!First mishap for the novice… After the front end of the caravan collapsed onto the turf when I didn’t tighten the jockey wheel adequately. The net result was that I had to jack it up and execute some swift repairs to one of the front legs as the pins enabling it to swivel had bent. A good lesson learnt.Easter Saturday - we spent our last day in the city of Adelaide with Joe & Mona before dropping them off with their friends. It is a gracious city for sure with its wide streets, old buildings and extensive parklands. We enjoyed lunch in the warm sun overlooking the Torrens River.Easter Sunday afternoon now finds us perched at Hancocks Lookout on the edge of Mount Remarkable National Park with a panoramic view over Spencers Gulf. A marvellous spot from which to compile our weekly blog.