From the Barossa Valley, we arrive in nearby Adelaide
Poor South Australia often gets missed by overseas visitors – people with time restrictions usually limit themselves to the east coast. This state has so much going for it.
We take a tram out to Glenelg, where there is a beach.
The water is a beautiful blue, but cold at this time of the year.
Yep, South Australia has it all; great seafood, rich wheat-belts, mineral wealth, superb wineries, opals, former nuclear weapon test sites, and a classy state capital.
We visit the National Wine Centre. Explains the history of the ever-more-successful Australian wine industry.
We take a city bus from our caravan park into town every day. Beside the bus stop is a palm tree that doubles as a sort of bird condominium.
We depart for the Victoria border. But not before visiting one last South Australian wine-producing area: McLaren Vale.
We restrict ourselves to a single vineyard, d’Arenberg. We already carry as many bottles of wine as we can reasonably transport. (But we make room for a few more.) The proprietor, Chester Osborn, is quite a character.
This is the visitor centre. It’s ‘different’, as my mother would say. It’s her polite code-word for ‘weird’.
Among its oddities is a smell-o-rama room, where you squeeze bulb horns (mounted on bicycle handlebars) to get a whiff of the distinct aromas to look for in wine.
The urinals in the gents are, um, unique.
It’s wonderfully warm in this part of South Australia.
We arrive in the state of Victoria and follow the Great Ocean Road.
It has pretty coastal scenery, of course.
Parts of the GOR pass though forests that look like Canada.
There are grand views over the white-capped Southern Ocean.
Many remote rock formations.
We stop at the Twelve Apostles. (Spoiler alert – there aren’t actually twelve.) It is very popular, attracting the busloads of visitors that make us uncomfortable.
We hike to the beach below and try to keep warm in the cool drizzle by performing some interpretive dance.
The landscape in Victoria is a far cry from the parched rocks of central Australia in which we’ve spent so much time.
We arrive in Geelong and visit the engaging National Wool Museum.
Sight or Insight of the Day – Adelaide & the Great Ocean Road
Until a few weeks ago. Beginning on the road to Norseman in WA, we start to see snakes both alive and flattened.
This bad boy is a death adder. We can tell by the worm-like tail appendage (hard to see in this photo) that they use to lure their prey.
We hear snakes are appearing now after a winter spent semi-hibernating. Still doesn’t explain why we didn’t see any in the always-steaming North.