Clare, Barossa and Adelaide
Weeks 50 to 52
We have quietly gone about our business this past three weeks, enjoying and enduring.
This part of our journey began in Whyalla, diminished from past glory, but here we finally get that tyre replaced, compliments of Beaurepaires. Thank you. The shore is unusual, but beautiful. We encounter more green golf and friendly locals before we venture on to the land of the valleys.
This area of South Australia has a lot to offer. Our entry to the Clare Valley was over rolling hills and steep rises, not as green as our eye expects, but beautiful all the same. We are back in winery country, but the fields are poor cousins in terms of the Margaret River, a little run down and we think awhile on how hard it must be for wine producers to make a living in this competitive age.
The tourist drives are enjoyable, the little towns full of second hand stores that open on the weekends for the urban tourists. The other eye catchers are the stone houses, many boasting their own vines gracing pergolas. We think of Spain and Paris, for everywhere there is European old world ambience, probably due to the early immigration here.
After a pleasant week we move to the Barossa valley. The game is lifted here and we have more style, this time beating the Margaret River area for ambience. Everything said about the Clare Valley is enhanced. Our park is green and beside the twin ovals at the town of Nuriootpa where the schoolboy national cricket trials are being held for the week.
There are hamlets all over the area, through the Eden Valley and the Adelaide Hills. Every ten or twenty kilometres there is another community, some bustling, some quiet and we wonder how they all survive.
We have no trouble finding green golf courses, well kept and affordable for our twice weekly exercise golf. It is our way of establishing normalcy to our current lifestyle and forcing that necessary exercise.
Another rare evening we went to a dance class and were surprised by the seventy people piled into the Stockwell hall for the lessons for sequenced dances. Six dances were taught in the evening for the princely sum of three dollars each. Everyone was very friendly. We will have no idea of the dances next time we encounter them, but that matters little. At least the cobwebs have been brushed from our dance shoes.
Belinda and Chris, the owners of the cat that Brian befriended in Arno Bay are here in Noori, as the locals call it.
Close to Adelaide, we drove down to the Camping and Caravan show. What a huge event. After a day of popping into vans and motorhomes, we are happy with what we have. There is no envious thoughts, even for the glitzy new ones. The big disappointment that Brian’s jack that he wanted to buy was not here at the show. The company that sold them wasn’t present this year. Bad luck, as I told him he was divorced if he left the show without buying it. OOps. Me and my big mouth, but luckily he hasn’t taken me up on the threat.
Our last tourist drive in the Barossa took us to the whispering wall, a dam that has a unique feature. Stand on either end, speak normally and you can be heard, almost as if there is a speaker beside the listener’s ear. It is remarkable. A border collie here got rather excited, hearing the kids voices, but not being able to see them nearby. It was delightfully confused.
We only managed six nights at Semaphore, one of the beach suburbs of Adelaide. All action apparently is happening this coming weekend. You feel as if you are the casting director for Watership Down. There are rabbits everywhere, especially late evening. There are grey ones, brown ones, black ones, silver ones, blind ones and the list goes on. They say two rabbits turn into seventy in two months.
It has been a bit of an animal time. We called into the Big Rocking Horse to drool over the wooden toys and found a menagerie of animals to feed and pet that were delightful. Guess who was very popular?
It is quite nice here at Semaphore. We have our pick of golf courses, some reasonable and some very expensive. Bet you can’t guess our choices. There is an esplanade by the beach that meanders from suburb to suburb. When the wind is right, kite-surfers and sailboarders colour the sky with their rainbow shutes and sails, scudding across the sky like the northern lights.
The weather hasn’t been kind to us here. There was more rain the other night than Adelaide gets in a whole summer. A camper near us found that the cheap stand alone gazebos don’t stand up to wet windy weather. To make it worse, the whole shebang fell on his dry tent in the middle of the night to share the water around. He moved into a unit the next day.
Average days don’t bring out the best in us and we feel the call of home louder than ever. The countdown is on, but we have some meandering to do first. Lets hope the sunshine revitalizes our desire to seek and enjoy those special sights.
I could have filled pages when we visited the city. The sights and sounds are still rattling through my head. I need to position myself on a corner or at a coffee shop and quickly record the moments that pass. Brian would be bored.
And so three weeks have passed. We miss you all.
The worst is, three weeks in the midst of wine country and we have given up happy hour wine. How cruel is that? I fill up my crystal glass with water.
Cheers
The homesick nomads.
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