Blogs from Barossa Valley, South Australia, Australia, Oceania - page 9

Introduction We headed north for this week's walk, returning to the Para Wirra Recreation Park, and in particular, that part of the park that does not charge an entrance fee. This time we did a 2.5 hour loop walk through the southern end of the park over gentle hills. I would rate this walk as easy and suitable for families. All the tracks were wide, so well suited for walkers who are novices in picking out tracks in the bush. There is one moderately steep section (section 6 on the map). The park is full of flowering bushes and birds. If you have a small pair of field glasses/binoculars, bring them along, as this will help with watching the parrots popping in and out of the holes in the big old trees and the finches and ... read more

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 South Australian Park web site. How to get there ... From the city take Main North Road past the Old Spot Hotel until you get to Black top road. Turn right onto Black Top Road and head to One Tree Hill. Shortly after ... read more

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 we headed North along the Heysen trail until the edge of the valley (this is where the noise was at its worse). Then we turned left down a dirt road to the highway. We walked ... read more

I spent one day on another of those mini-bus based back-packer tours, this time round one of South Australia's wine growing regions, the Barossa Valley. This region was originally settled by Germans and the German influences are still very strong (the buses run on time, everyone is well organised and efficient etc. etc.). As well as seeing the area, visiting vine yards, seeing how wine is made etc., there was also the chance for some wine tasting. Oh, and some brandy tasting, and some port tasting, and some sherry tasting, and some champagne tasting. The Australians obviously didn't care that the Spanish and French tend to get a bit stroppy about those names being used elsewhere. Afterwards we also visited a Whispering Wall (although I assume that it's not the one in the bible) which will ... read more