Introduction This week's walk was at Para Wirra Recreation Park which is just south of the Barossa Valley. It is walk number 10 in George Driscoll’s book “50 real bush walks around Adelaide”, called “Gold diggers”. To be accurate, the walk was not within the main Park, but on the opposite side of Humbug Scrub Road. This is significant because to enter into the main park there is an entrance fee, but to do this walk, there is no additional cost. You can find out more about Para Wirra Recreation Park at the [url=http://www.parks.sa.gov.au/para_wirra/ [View Full Entry]

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Introduction Last Sunday was Dan's turn to pick the walk and he asked if we might try apple picking - something he had noted that you can do in autumn from James Muecke's book Adelaide for Kids (p152). As the book recommended, we looked at the "What's on" section of the Sunday Mail to find out that apples were indeed ripe for the picking at Summertown from 11 to 4 pm. To finish off the afternoon we also visited the nearby Mount Lofty Botanic Garden. How to get there To get to Summertown for apple picking, take Greenhill Road (passing through [View Full Entry]

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This blog entry is about our stay in Robe, a Southern coastal town on the Limestone coast. You can find out more about Robe from Wikipedia At Robe we stayed in a house at Long beach called Southern tide. It rained a lot which meant we didn’t get out much - but we were very comfortable. The house had large windows so we could watch the storms come in and be entertained by the little [url= [View Full Entry]

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Introduction We took a day trip to Mount Gambier on Tuesday. Mount Gambier is a major regional centre, located roughly half way between Melbourne and Adelaide. It has a population of about 25,000. The major draw card for us was that this region had active volcanos about 4-5000 years ago with major activity about 20-30,000 years before that. The result was a gently undulating country side with rich dark soil (used for growing potatoes and harvestable forest), volcanic craters, caves and sink holes. The centre piece of Mount Gambier are volcanic craters that have filled with water [View Full Entry]

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Easter saw the SA Hiker family heading down to the South East of South Australia to a region known as the Limestone Coast. We spent two nights in Naracoorte and three in Robe. Thirty-five million years ago this region was at the bottom of the Southern Ocean. There are large flat areas in the landscape, and then ranges, which are the sand hills of old. Limestone deposits abound. If you look closely at the Limestone rock you can see fossils of sea creatures, shells and coral. The people of the South East are industrious - as their promotional material states - [View Full Entry]

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Introduction This week it was my turn to choose the location - and I chose a bushwalk at Anstey Hill Recreation Park. We used George Driscoll's walk number 13 as a guide (page 32) as although we have visited Anstey Hill before, we had not been on these particular tracks. The park is located at the end of Grand Junction Road between North East Road and Lower North East Road. For this walk you need to go to the eastern side of the park - take LNE road and turn a sharp right on to Range Road South and pull up [View Full Entry]

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Introduction Today's walk was a stunning one and a memorable one - the Yulti Conservation Park. This walk was chosen by Peter and was planned to be three and half an hour walk along the Heysen Trail near Myponga (found in George Driscoll’s book). The Heysen trail itself is beautiful and I would recommend people visit this park if they are in the area allowing about two hours to traverse the park and return. The views are spectacular: to the west you will see the Myponga reservoir and the ocean, and on a clear d [View Full Entry]

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Introduction The Sunday family fun day activity for this week was on a Monday, and was chosen by Dan - a walk around the Adelaide zoo. The zoo is located on Frome Road close to the city centre of Adelaide. We parked our car on the northern side of the zoo and walked along the linear pathway that runs along the River Torrens towards Frome road. Decorating the entrance was a giant inflated gorilla that was drawing crowds into the zoo on a mild Adelaide cup day holiday Monday. The gorillas were only visiting for 7 months - but it was [View Full Entry]

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In late February we walked through a part of the Barossa Valley near Greenock. This is NOT a walk that I would recommend anyone do during summer. The day was lovely, the scenery was fabulous (rolling valleys with vines heavily laden with grapes) - but the serenity was destroyed by the bird scarers. Usually it is air rifles that are used to frighten off the crows, but near Greenock they use the new audio devices- playing loud obnoxious noises constantly to scare the birds away from the fruit. Very, very painful indeed. From the bridge on the Eastern side of Greenock [View Full Entry]

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It was Dan's choice of walk today and he chose the Adelaide Botanical Gardens. These gardens are located on North Terrace in Adelaide city. We spent 3 hours wandering around these lovely gardens and I managed to take 94 pictures! A selection of them are saved here. We started out walk in the park behind the zoo (access from Hackney Road). On Sunday the car parking is free - and of course there is no charge to enter the gardens. There is a fee to get into the Rainforest Conservatory, but more about that later. On the North west corner of [View Full Entry]

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