Back to Adelaide

Our last 2 days in Adelaide included a visit to Jack’s cousin George and 2 nights sampling some of the Adelaide Cabaret Fesitival events.

We saw Eden Espinosa, based in New York and known for her performances in many Broadway muscials.  Also The Suitcase Royale in a performance “The Ballad of Backbone Joe”.  They were a Melbourne trio performing a “ballard of junkyard theatre, visual trickery, dark humor and rag’n’bone music”.  Two totally different acts and both very enjoyable.  Also caught some roaming acrobats performing in a central Festival space.

We enjoyed catching up with Gillian and Cameron … but took no pictures of them!

Then we headed back to Sydney.

Robert Burns

We headed back to Adelaide via the Barossa Valley, where we were surprised by the traffic jams in Tanunda. We made a detour to an “historic site” of the Robbie Burns Inn …. in the middle of nowhere

The Clare Valley

The scenery was pretty, but wintery in the Clare Valley where we stayed at Patly Hill Farm on the Blyth Road out of Clare.  Great B&B self contained accommodation on a working farm with vines, olives, fruit and vegies, sheep, dogs and  birds.  From this base we visited a few vineyards, galleries, historic homes (including Martindale Hall where Picnic at Hanging Rock was filmed), coffee shops and pubs through Sevenhill, Blyth, Auburn, Manoora and Mintaro.

Jamestown: Glasgow House

We headed inland from the Spencer Gulf in search of rolling hills and good food.

Jamestown was a pretty little village with the best food we had come across all trip, at a little cafe.  The town is so little, we forgot we had already been there on our way north, but happy to visit again for the good food, the famous “Glasgow House”, a general store where we both bought hats (no photos please), and as Jack commented “the best looking women” we had seen in any of these country towns! (Again no photos of those women please)

Port Germein

South of Port Augusta we stopped in at Port Germein to view the historic mile long jetty, once the longest in the southern hemisphere.  Still too long for us to walk to the end of …

Whyalla

With not too much to do in Port Augusta, we took a day trip to Whyalla, a more appealing town with major steelworks and a relaxed seaside atmosphere for a picnic and coffee.

Port Augusta

Port Augusta is known as the crossroads to Australia’s outback north, east and west.  We didn’t find it to be a bustling or scenic spot, although our hotel on the golf course had a good view and noisy cockatoos partying in a nearby tree. We did find out the name and nature of the everpresent saltbush, and got a good view from an old water tower.

A highlight was catching up with Joy and Pete who were on a long 4wd trip through to the Oonandatta trail and beyond.

Blinman and Parachilna

We left Wilpina and headed north to a small, pretty and friendly (both the cafe and general store owners) town of Blinman.  Then on the gravel road and water crossings through to Parachilna with a population of 7 and a good hotel we were going to stay at, but instead tore down the highway to Port Augusta with the Flinders Ranges on our left and just a couple of stops at abandoned townsites to compete for good photos.

Wilpena Pound

Jack wants my boring blog to be funny and so he will edit it and insert words like  bum and fart and fuck … such Glasgow humour as Billy Connolly … so will leave that for him….

We had fantastic cold clear weather to walk in during the day and see the fantastic milky way at night.  We walked up to the top of a lookout on the edge of the pound and also deep into the valley and around the old homestead,  where we rested with the kangaroos after tramping some of the Heyson Trail.  By the amount of photos, you can see that it became a bit of duelling cameras too.

Wilpena Pound at Sunset

After checking in to our cabin accommodation within Wilpena Pound Resort we headed off to view the sunset from Stokes Hill.  This is also the time when thousands of kangaroos are out grazing close to the road, so we returned to the resort at 35 kph on a 110 kph road to avoid any messy collisions. You can judge by our headgear it was cold.