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Published: December 27th 2010
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Now where did we leave you in Blog 30? Ah yes, we were just settling down with Ron & Shirley for a game of Qwirkle.
It was still light but the sky looked ominous. The game was intriguing, so much so that we hadn’t noticed the inky black clouds that had now moved overhead and the out of the black came the lightening with the crack of thunder on it’s heels. Shirley suggested may be a good time to pack up, but some silly sod said ‘no, let’s wait to see if it rains’ and these words were answered with a gust of wind that cleared the table of Qwirkle, drinks and nibbles, as we were simultaneously lashed with rain. Debby and the silly sod then spent 20 minutes wrestling and clinging on to the awning whilst we attempted to “put it away”, before the storm took it away. Mission accomplished we fell into the caravan soaked to the skin, Debby having won the Miss Quorn Wet T-Shirt competition, and the wet silly sod wishing he’d listened to Shirley. The rest of the storm we prayed that the two tall trees we were parked beside were of strong character and limbs.
We rose the next morning to find devastation in the Caravan Park and Quorn. Trees had come down, one hitting the side of an occupied cabin, one poor old bloke had his tent collapse on top of him and had been rescued by the site owners, half the balcony of the Quorn pub had gone so too the roof of a house, plus hundreds of fallen branches littering the street…..thankfully no injuries. We couldn’t believe how lucky we were not to have been hit, our relief so great we spent the next morning helping the park owners clear the debris.
Leaving Quorn to continue the clean up with out us we headed just down the road to Mt Remarkable National Park (don’t ask, we don’t know) and stopped at The Beautiful Valley Caravan Park at Wilmington, which was on the doorstep. An hour or so and 14km later we were at the car park and preparing for a walk along a stream to ‘The Terraces’ before retracing our steps and heading to ‘The Narrows’. Now whilst neither could be said to be spectacular it was a very pleasant couple of hours, and good fun walking ‘The Narrows’ trying to
keep our feet dry.
Something that make us mad!
Why, on returning to our caravan do we find a dirty great big Winnebago parked right next door when the park was empty?? We didn’t see the culprit so we wrote “pillock” in the dirt on his motor home.
Sorry for the digression, back to the journey. Another short drive (we love ‘em) and we are in the Clare Valley for 3 days, taste some more great reds and give them our marks out of 100 (who is James Halliday anyway?). As always we like to visit some well known wineries along with a few boutique ones. Our first stop was ‘Sevenhills’. This winery is run by Jesuit priests and does a decent drop of Shiraz, but the church and cellar door are worth a visit even if you are tee-total. The next stop was the well-known ‘Annie’s Lane’, well, it’s well known to us, but our favourite of the big guns was ‘Taylor’s’. The largest family owned winery in South Australia if not Australia itself. Being the only two people at the cellar door Sara agrees to give us an unscheduled tour and tasting and blending session. The
volumes of wine produced were just mind blowing, but the best was blending your own red from a selection of Shiraz, Merlot and Cab Sav, and we say in all modesty that they were not bad.
We would like to state here and now that sampling red wine is not the only thing we enjoy doing (oh, ok, yes it is), we do like a little culture. So to cure us we visited Martindale Hall. The Hall, as you will see from the pic, is a copy of the type of stately home you can find in UK. Besides touring the Hall, at a modest $250 per person you can stop overnight in a small lumpy bed and be served breakfast in the kitchen, oh, and share a bathroom with the other guests (if any). Debby wasn’t too up for it! She didn’t mind sharing with the guests it was the sharing with the ghosts that was the problem.
How lucky can we be? Right across the main road from our park is the village showground and under cover markets. What’s on Sunday night? Carols and performances from local artists. Knowing we would be in ear-shot we decide to
wander across for a looksee. First on the programme was the South Australia Police Band, and boy were they good. Unfortunately the rest found it hard to maintain this standard so we took our leave and retired for the night.
Oh no, that dreaded time of year – school holidays – is just round the corner, so we have decided on 2 lots of 10 day stays. So it’s off to Semaphore (Adelaide on the beach)then the Barossa Valley. So keep your eyes peeled for our next blog and another good read whilst enjoying your xmas break.
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