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Published: January 16th 2010
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Day 260 - Eden Valley to Happy Valley
We didn’t think it could get much hotter, we were wrong! We woke to a stinker this morning and wondered if we’d made the right decision to get on the road today. My primary school chum Donna whom we met up with at her home near Sydney featured in our
The old school days blog, is visiting her Mum & Dad in Adelaide for a few days so we’re intending to swing by and perhaps scoot out to Victor Harbour with its horse drawn trams on a bit of a day trip. However now we’re wondering if the weather will be too overpowering but we’re keen to explore so decide to head off and take the chance.
Sadly nobody else was up and about by the time we were ready to leave the showground so we put our shower block key in the microwave and waved a silent goodbye. It's been a great place to stay and explore the area, all mod cons and at a very reasonable rate.
With Tom Tom geared up to give us directions we were off and running with an ETA of 11.15am, there’s nothing like being precise
is there! The journey took us along the same route as our trip to Hahndorf but it’s a scenic drive and with the water bomb planes already circling in the air on the lookout for fires it was quite an interesting one.
I often sit with the laptop catching up with the blog when we’re on a reasonable journey so I miss quite a lot of the goings on but Darryl obviously captures the lot and this morning it’s the multiple white lines in the middle of the road which have caught his attention. There were four at one stage so it looks as if whoever laid for the first lot hadn’t got the positioning quite right forcing them to be done again but the originals are still visible. It really looks a mess and had Mr Howells ranting on for quite a while about the state of the roads which leads shortly to comments about sub standard driving skills prompted by us being over taken coming up to the brow of a hill with double solid white lines (just the one set!) running beside us. There was indeed a car coming in the opposite direction but luckily for
everyone the woman driver (it had to be unfortunately) just managed to pull in front of us after making her ridiculous move. South Australia has a crash marker system along its roads where a black marker indicates a death and a red marker indicates a serious accident. The quantity of accidents is all the more visible in this state because of the markers and it’s just astounding and very sad to see.
We drag the caravan up some pretty big hills this morning as we wind our way to the Hardy’s home in Happy Valley but it’s worth it for the views alone, it’s outstanding looking down on the city.
A very warm welcome was waiting for us at the home of Mr & Mrs Hardy, although now I’m out of primary school I’m sure that calling them Maggie and Brian will be fine! It was just lovely to see them again and of course to catch up with Donna and little Jackson who will celebrate his first birthday on Australia day in a couple of weeks time. We all decided it was just too hot for a trip to Victor Harbour so instead we went out for
lunch which was fabulous and a real treat. The Hardy’s are very hospitable, lovely to chat with and we both feel very comfortable in their company. If we were happy just to hang around at home today then they were happy for us to be there so we became a couple of ‘heat refugees’! We parked the caravan on the drive and hooked it up to the electric so the fridge didn’t struggle quite so much in the hot air. Maggie had kindly offered us the use of a room overnight in the coolness of the air conditioning and in this heat you would have thought we’d jump at it but we remained true to the cause and have every intention of sleeping in the caravan on the drive like a couple of gypsies!
A trip to the beach was in order so we grabbed our swimmers and piled into the cars, I went with Maggie whilst Darryl kept Brian, Donna and Jackson entertained. We both recognised the view coming into sight as we got closer to the city, it was Glenelg just in the distance where we’d spent the last few days of our honeymoon nearly ten years
ago. Today we were heading for Brighton beach which turned out to be lovely and very vibrant when we arrived. A bit of playing on the sand, a bit of swimming in the sea then a nice walk along the jetty to watch the young loons launching themselves into the ocean below! Jackson is a hoot and bless him although he’s teething at the moment Darryl still makes him laugh, those big belly laughs that little ones do. I reckon it’s cos Dar’s got a funny face but all babies love, love, love him.
Maggie and Brian cooked up a terrific dinner, their hospitality has just been awesome and we spent a very pleasant evening chatting until it was time for bed.
The three of them (Jackson was in bed by this time!) stood at the door and waved us goodnight, still thinking we were crazy for not taking up the offer of the room but we’re quite happy in our little home on the drive!
Night everyone
Dar and Sar
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Donna
non-member comment
No mention of the jelly fish!
Glad you had a wonderful time. Am looking forward to reading all your blog over the next few weeks and even though Ross still thinks real camping is digging your own dunny and pitching a tent in the middle of nowhere, I think I've convinced him to start me off camping (again) with a local camp site with showers and flushing loos to see how we go with Jackson. I'm also planning to look into the geocaching so once done I'll let you know ready for your visit back with us in March. Apparently Ross' Dad has a hand held GPS for fishing so we can borrow that to have some fun. Looking forward to reading more. Hope you stay safe and keep laughing.