Barossa Valley

The drive from Adelaide was easy, and for once we had no problems with picking up the car.

We arrived in the valley down Seppeltsfield Road, past the very large Seppeltsfield Winery, it is probably the largest building in the area. Peter Seppelt was one of the German Lutherans who founded this community in the 1830’s, it used to be known as the Valley of Churches, but now it is the Valley of Wine with in excess of 100 wineries.

Our Hotel was The Louise, 15 suites in a beautiful setting near the top of a hill, with views over rows of vines, it had 1 vineyard (Scharkes) opposite and another (Heritage) next door, they had both of these wines on their list and they must be the least travelled wines in the world to an independent restaurant.

Our suite was superbly furnished with two showers, one indoor and the other outdoor, we used them both of course. They have a very upmarket and expensive restaurant – The Appelation, which we used on the last evening, it has two ‘tasting’ style menus from which you can chose 3 or 5 courses from a list of dishes, to have smallish plates but of course with a palate cleanser between courses; the 5 course selection can also come with a specially selected wine for each course.

Breakfast was served in our suite and we chose to use to have it outdoors on our little patio area.

On the first day after checking in we visited Maggie Beer’s Farm Shop, where they serve mini picnic hampers for lunch and have a large lake, for purposes unknown.

On the first two evenings we were visited by a kangaroo who stopped to eat outside the terrace about 20 yards away.

On the second day we visited three local towns Nuriootpa, Angaston and Tanundra; all lovely little places and Tanundra even has a micro brewery producing some british style ales. George had a taste of the local white and made a new friend in the Yalumba winery at Angaston.

We had driven around the Barossa for 1½ days and thought to go a little further afield, we drove along the Sturt Highway (another Australian pioneer) which connects Adelaide to Sydney. First stop was at a town called Truro which was about 200yards long, Gwen bought some olives for her friend Gloria. 

We then drove about 40 miles to the town of Blanchetown which is a horse short, it is on the Murray River and the site of a recent drinking water project, which gave us some interesting pictures of Pelicans and what looked like Cormorants.

We were told that the next town along - Waikerie had much more to see including a café, but since it was another 60 miles away we decided to give it a miss.

On the way back we visited the Wolf Blass winery, but it was very architecturally modern; stainless steel, concrete and glass trying to sell at prices higher than you could buy in the local bottleshops, so Gwen had a few tastings but I was driving.

We stopped off at the small Murray Street Winery in the town of Greenock and bought a very reasonably priced bottle of Chardonnay.

We then drove to the town of Lyndoch and had a snack at the German Café before going to the Jacobs Creek Winery at Jacobs Creek in Rowland Flat where Gwen had several more tastings and bought a very nice Pinot Grigio.

This winery is also of a modern design, but much more human and friendly, they had several exhibition pieces.

Adelaide

Our hotel was on North Terrace, right in the middle of town, an older style hotel, fine for a few days. As in many other hotels their Internet policy was terrible one of the worst we found, A$ 0.62 per minute, 2hrs A$12.50, 24hrs A$ 24, walked down to Rundle Mall good speed unlimited free Wi-Fi at David Jones, what a surprise.

Next morning went on of a tour of Adelaide, took lots of pictures of monuments, Edward 7^th and Queen Victoria to name but two.

Our tour visited Glenelg, Adelaide’s seaside resort, a bit like Weston Super Mare but smaller.

We rode the bus an extra bit when we got back so that a group could get on a River Cruise; but the traffic was awful, a Muslim Women’s group were demonstrating carrying black flags, no idea what that was all about.

Adelaide is a ‘planned city’; back in 1839, Colonel Light and his Surveyors laid the ground plans which are the same today, our guide described it as an easy city to live, I can see why, no big jams, parks all round the central city and all the facilities you could ever want. 

We rode the free circle bus and went to Ayers House, one of the explorers who built Australia and had the rock named after him. However the Australian National Trust has no idea how to organise such a treasure, we had missed a tour by a few minutes and the next one was over an hour later; of course we were not allowed to go round on our own. This place is in the Central Square Mile of Adelaide and on most of the major bus routes, very close to a major park, Our National Trust would get over 1,000 visitors a day, the Australians aren’t good at everything, just most.

After our trip to the Barossa Valley we had a few hours to spare and went back to Glenelg with it's direct tram to the city of Adelaide and its neighbour Brighton, both very nice little coastal places with history, and very close to the Airport.

 

 

We found an amazing anomaly in petrol prices, When we first hired a car in Melbourne we paid A$1.38 per litre, A$1.48 in Queensland (apparently there is always a 10 cent rise over the Christmas holiday. In Alice Springs the price was A$1.70, transporting fuel 1,500 km is probably very expensive; but around Adelaide we paid A$1.34 on the freeway, and then A$1.31 in Brighton; 2 miles away towards the airport the price was A$1.50; absolutely amazing.

The Ghan

One of the Great Railway Journeys of the World, covering almost 3,000 km from Darwin to Adelaide.

We joined in Alice Springs for the journey to Adelaide, which takes just under 24 hours.

The temperature at the Station was 43C when we had our picture taken under the statue of the camel and driver on the platform.

After a glass of champagne in the lounge coach we trooped down the platform some 4 coaches back to coach D berths 11 & 12. The compartment was compact, with the tiniest pull down toilet and hand basin with shower in a cupboard. Sleeping was in bunk berths with almost no room to move at all.

Meals were served in a restaurant in the next coach to the lounge over 4 sittings, we got lunch at 2:15 and dinner at 8:45, 6 ½ hours between meals.

The scenery was shall we say consistent, scrub, scrub and more scrub. Once out of Alice it was 6 hours before we passed under a bridge carrying the Stuart Highway, which also runs from Darwin to Adelaide. About an hour later we came to stop in a passing loop and one of the train staff got out to operate the points to let a freight train pass us and then had to walk the length of the train to join the locomotives at the front.

The next morning after breakfast we had some more excitement, a kangaroo jumping along in a massive field alongside the train (we had passed into arable country) and a ‘willy willy’ which is a small circular sandstorm.

We arrived in Adelaide about ½ hour early, George had his picture taken in the compartment and I got a shot of the nameplate which is on every coach. I couldn’t get down to the locomotives which were some 18 coaches forward; The Ghan is an enormous train 30 coaches long, getting on for ½ mile.

Alice Springs

We arrived after very short flight (30 minutes) but we still got a bun and a cup of tea.

We took the Alice Wanderer Shuttle into town and found it was closed; New Year’s Day is a public holiday in Australia but Alice Springs goes to town and a lot of places close until 19^th January, including 2 of the 3 tour companies, apart from special bookings. We tried to get a Town Tour from the 3^rd company - AAT Kings again, but they cancelled 2 minutes after taking our booking, we were the only people booked.

Our hotel was the Lasseter’s Hotel and Casino and on New Year’s Day they were very busy with a special offer on Steaks of A$18, they called it Tight Tuesday !

We tried walking to the Town Centre attractions but in the heat even at 9:30 it was too much, so we hired a car which was cheaper than the tours anyway and we got to visit an extra place.

We visited the Reptile Centre seeing lizards and snakes, there was a python called Monty (see below) and a saltwater crocodile in a tank called Terry, he did not look happy.

Next was the Royal Flying Doctor Service which was founded here in 1929. We saw a very interesting video and looked over a mock up front half of their latest aircraft a Pilatus P6 made in Switzerland, very powerful and with extremely short take off and landing capability. After that we spent a lot of money in their shop, they are a very deserving cause. There are over 60 RFDS stations in and around Australia, they even cover Christmas Island.

Next visit was the School on the Air which started in Alice in 1951, using the radio technology pioneered by the RFDS.

From Alice they currently have 138 pupils within generally a circular area of 600, the furthest pupils are from their classmates at the moment is over 1,400 kilometres.

Nowadays the radio has been generally superseded by the Internet and Video and are taught as classes using video, chat and whiteboard technologies.They have 3 studios and 11 teachers covering 4 ½ yr. olds up to 14 at the moment, when pupils switch to either correspondence courses or boarding school.

The children have a classroom of their own at home or on the station where their parents work and have a helper (usually mother) to help them.

Their home classroom is equipped with lap top and fixed computers, router, printer and a large satellite dish for 2 way communication.

 

The children come into Alice 3 or 4 weeks a year accompanied by their parents to meet and work directly with their teachers and classmates., it is a strong and expensive commitment by all parties.

They get a lot of visitors some very famous others like ourselves less so.

We tried to get to the Telegraph station which was a repeater on the Adelaide to Darwin line set up in the 1890’s, but it meant a lot of walking and the temperature was 45C, we did get a picture though. 

The telegraph reduced the turn around of communications between the colony and London to a couple of hours from 16 weeks minimum.

When the station was built there was no town, and it developed into a small township before the town developed about a mile south between 2 rivers, which of course are dry 98% of the time. The telegraph station was built next to a natural spring which was named after the telegraphists wife Alice, hence Alice’s spring became Alice Springs.

Next stop to last was the War Memorial set on ANZAC Hill overlooking the town giving a good view of the town and surrounding hills.

Last stop was the Old Ghan Museum which ran to and from Adelaide from 1929 to 1980, when the new standard gauge track was completed carrying passengers on the famous Ghan and of course huge quantities of goods, the service was extended to Darwin in 2004.

The name Ghan comes from the camel drivers who were superseded by the railway who were mainly Afghans. After the camels became redundant they were set free and there are now an estimated 1,000,000 feral camels in Australia, we saw one in Uluru.

The hotel was pretty good and boasted a very nice pool which Gwen swam in several times, once there were 2 robot cleaners in the pool and she had to keep changing course to avoid them.

Alice Springs is almost exactly the geographical centre of Australia and is about as far from anywhere that you can get.

Nearest civilisation is Yulara, the resort for Ayers Rock at 250 km southwest, the next in this easterly direction is Kalgoorlie, one of the goldrush towns another 1,000+ kms away.

Next is Tennents Creek 500 km north also a telegraph sation. Coober Pedy is about 600 km south and is where Opals are dug.

East would be a township in either Queensland or New South Wales, probably 1,000 km away.

We have never been so far from anywhere.