Sunday, Oct 30 - A Drive through the Wine Country

 (pic: Black Swan &

Royal Spoonbills)

We had scrambled eggs and bacon in our little trailer and then walked across the street where we found a lovely trail overlooking the River Murray with lots of ducks and parrots and other birds. We packed up and checked out of our very nice trailer park and drove 25 miles to Banrock Station, a former sheep ranch, now an eco-friendly winery and wildlife sanctuary! What a combo! We made a reservation for lunch and then took a four-kilometer walk along the river, on boardwalks and trails with several bird hides. We got great views of the very elusive Australian Reed Warbler, which has a wonderful loud song but rarely emerges from the bulrushes.

. At noon we returned to the winery and got a nice table overlooking the river. Bob had a pumpkin risotto cake with sautéed shrimp, and I had a twice-cooked egg (soft boiled egg, peeled, coated with crumbs and sautéed) with parmesan cheese on top of asparagus in a pool of green pea puree, along with a couple of glasses of their very nice wines! Our first real lunch of the trip and an excellent one.

We returned to Waikerie and headed southwest to the town of Nuriootpa and drove south through the Barossa Valley and the Adelaide Hills wine districts: vast vineyards lined with palm trees and red roses, lovely trim little towns. We didn’t stop as we’d already had enough wine but just admired the lovely scene, and came to find out later that we should have bought a bottle somewhere!

About four we reached the tiny town of Aldgate, and, with the aid of Bob’s downloaded map, found the narrow twisted street of Wilpena Terrace and our B&B, the Cladich Pavilions, which turned out to be three units built into a hillside and positioned so each has a private view of the surprisingly lush vegetation. Weeks ago when I booked I guess I picked the small unit because of the price, and it is very elegant, but not very practical for our purposes. It has a refrigerator stocked for a continental breakfast but doesn’t have a sink or hotplate so we can’t cook anything. The owner was away, we couldn‘t get on line and there is no phone so in the complete absence of local information decided to go out and seek food while it was still daylight.

We found one restaurant but the music was so loud and the seating outside so cold (Antarctic cold front just came through) that we went across the street for take-out roast pork and chips but no wine available. We got back to our room and discovered that gravy had been poured all over the fries…the pork was good, however. I went to make some tea and toast for dessert and managed to set off the smoke alarm! Helen, the owner, arrived to greet us: I can use her computer, so we’ll see if I can blog with it tomorrow. Also she grabbed my bag of very smelly laundry and said she would do it as there is no laundromat in town! That was nice and unexpected!

We’re going to organize our gear tomorrow and then leave for the Adelaide Airport very early Tuesday morning in hopes that we can make it to Brisbane for our trip Wednesday to PNG!