We can only apologise loyal readers (are any of you still out there?). Where does the time go? So I thought I'd ease us back in with some photos of our recent road trip from Adelaide in South Australia, through the Barossa Valley wine region all the way to the outback of Broken Hill. We took a couple of days around the Anzac Day public holiday to do our first proper Oz road trip. 700km, pretty small by Oz roadtrip standards, but very varied. We saw mile after mile of vineyards in lovely Autumn hues, dusty, straight and empty roads and lots of red earth. Oh and some wild emus.
Adelaide is a lovely city - it feels sedate, intelligent and relaxed. This picture, however, is of a stripclub. It had pretty lights.
Whilst in Adelaide we watched the Anzac Day Parade. Both of us had a good blub at the WW2 Veterans and were generally impressed by the size of the parade with Adelaide not even being Australia's second or third city.
The next day, after Ben narrowly avoided mowing down the nation's sweetheart (a blind contestant from Australia's The Voice) we headed out on a very pretty drive to the Barossa - a couple of hours drive from Adelaide and one of the best wine producing regions in the country. We stopped off in Tanunda - settled by Germans way back in the 1880s looking to pursue their religion without persecution. It still retains subtle influences of it's German origins - the odd Lutheran church and a fine trade in Bratwurst. And so we started our wineries stumble....
After sampling quite a lot of wine, we had a lovely meal (with more wine) and bedded down in our first Aussie motel.
The next day was a 3 day state - starting out in South Australia, passing along the Murray River where we stopped off in Wakerie and Renmark for some baked goods and another pie.
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| Ned Kelly Pie. Heart attack territory. |
Passing into the state of Victoria along a very long straight road, we eventually wiggled up back into New South Wales stopping off in Wentworth for the night. Wentworth sits at the junction of the Murray and Darling rivers and was a nice little town with a scenic view of the meeting of the two rivers complete with laughing kookaburras.
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| 2 fat kookaburras sitting in a tree... |
I inevitably struggled to find some vegetarian food and we had a cracking night watching the locals line dancing in the local RSL (working mens type place). And Ben discovered another new size of beer to go with the schooners, midis and pots - the thimble of beer.
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| An unimpressed smile |
The next morning we stopped off at the impressive Perry Sand Dunes just outside the town before starting the final 300km to Broken Hill. Not sure why the sand dunes are there. Weird.
We continued to Broken Hill down some even more empty roads. Just the occasional massive truck full of mining related stuff trundling past us and the odd flattened kangaroo by the side of the road. Broken Hill was the centre of the Australian mining boom and is still an active mining town today - silver and minerals - but a thriving art scene has also sprung up. It's a fascinating place so I might spread it across a few more blogs. I'll finish this one with a picture of us out at a sculpture park in the desert at sunset. It was stunning. Nothing but desert as far as you could see and the setting sun bouncing off all the red rock. Which is why we look like we've had a bad accident with some fake tan.
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| oompaloompa |
