Canberra

From Barossa we decided to head toward Sydney where we will be spending Christmas and New Years with Luke's cousin and her family.

Our first stop on route was Mildura where we camped at the Lawn Tennis Club next to a grumpy lady in her campervan. We played on our long boards and I taught Luke how to use the Poi (Maori fire balls on chains, without the fire). We hit the library to let our parents know we were alive, stocked up of food and fuel and hit the road again as the weather was awful and wasn't showing any signs of improving for the next couple of days.

We stayed the night at a trucker's rest stop beside the main road. The rain was SO LOUD on our campervan roof - loud enough to even drown out Luke's snoring!
The next day we hit the road again in the rain and, with just 5 hours journey estimated on our Tom Tom (Bruce we call him and yes, he has an Aussie accent), we aimed to reach Canberra.

Siesta in the park

We arrived at Canberra in torrential rain and hit the supermarket for some more fruit and veggies - when it's hot it's very hard to keep fresh food in the camper in our little cool box, even when we do abuse the supermarket's freezer section and place our freezer packs next to the ice-cream tubs... So, with the arrival of cooler weather, I'll be damned if I don't at least get to enjoy a nice pear or two!
We parked up next to the lake for the night and work early on Thursday to a run and porridge then set off on our longboards to explore the city, we got a subway for lunch and had a little nap in the park. I love siestas. My overall impression is that the city is very clean. It feels a bit empty too which isn't surprising - Canberra is geologically half the size of London but only has 400,000 inhabitants, compared to London's 8,000,000!!
I found the atmosphere pretty laid back and certainly very friendly but there didn't seem to be much diversity in cafes and bars so I would imagine the night life would be a bit lacking.

Ultimately, Canberra is a very well thought out city. Parliament and the National Gallery & Library are on one side of a large lake and the city centre is on the other side. There is a cycle path that runs the entire circumference of the lake, which is split in three by two bridges. The distance of the largest loop (Western) is 18km which we foolishly decided to run around on Friday morning - exhaustio!

National Bonsai collection

Canberra War Memorial

The weather was very good for us throughout most of our stay. Saturday we decided to visit the War Memorial as we figured it would be very busy on Sunday 11th but, when we arrived, it was extremely crowded... Little did we know we had chosen to visit the same day Prince Charles and Camilla had too (we're convinced they followed us over from Windsor). It's the first time i've seen Charlie or Camilla up-close so it was a pretty cool experience. Not sure if they appreciated my sitting on Luke's shoulders but, hey-ho! We returned on Sunday for the memorial service and explored the National Bonsai collection on the way back to the camper for lunch - Bonsai means 'planted in a pot', which was interesting to find out as I assumed it meant 'little tree'?! Later that afternoon we decided to hit the road to Wollongong, getting further up towards Sydney.

Return to Adelaide - Glenelg & Barossa Valley

The last week of October for us was not exactly laborious. Having driven so far from Port Lincoln in one go we decided we deserved a good relaxing break. True to our natures however, our version of 'relaxing' invariably ends up being a little more strenuous than we set out to enjoy...

Glenelg Harbour

I had a nice run on Monday morning along Henley beach followed by a longish (10km each way) long board into Glenelg with Luke. We had lunch out (what a treat!) and ice-cream and a good mooch around the surf shops - something we have been good at avoiding until now... Luke is a bad influence on me (tongue in cheek)... We made our return journey and camped up for the night in our same old spot. We were starting to feel like we were on borrowed time a little with our parking spot on the beach front, in front of all the modern sea-front mansions, but we decided to push our luck a little further!

On Tuesday we finally got around to getting our Medicare sorted. So easy to get stuff done over here. None of that British bureaucracy over here, just simple sign a form with a lady to help you, then - done. Easy. We chilled on the beach with some beers and took a nice romantic stroll down the pier in the moonlight, aggghh.

Wednesday 31st we had a bit of a shopping spree and went back for some boardies and bikinis we'd seen in Glenelg (whoops!). Later that eve we were asked to move on from our nice spot in Henley (always move on when you get the 'borrowed time' feeling), so we found a backstreet a little further along the way.

Thursday we set off for Barossa - our main reason for returning to Adelaide a second time - on our way through to Canberra. We figured that it would be a shame to have educated our palettes so well in McLaren Vale to not then put them to use in the most famous wine valleys of Australia. It would have been extremely narrow-minded of us indeed! So... with that dutiful mindset, we set off to find somewhere to camp a little nearer by.

Barossa Day 1
We arrived at a campsite in the heart of Barossa at about 10am. Luke drove us the first day and we visited a few recommended Cellar Doors: McGuigan, Ross Estate, Jacob's Creek and Langmeil. We discovered that Jacob's Creek produce fantastic wines and I never did get an answer as to why we see so much of the lower end of their produce...

McGuigan international winemakers

We had stumbled upon a well kept secret at Langmeil: Barossa produces some of the finest Shiraz in Australia and indeed, worldwide but their finest produce definitely lies in their fortified wines (the real stuff!). We were speaking to a local priest who was telling us, among other things, that the larger and older wineries in Barossa had bottled their finest wines in the slower economic periods as seeing them put to waste was more than they could bare. The result is that their fortified wines are just fantastic, and rather strong - AKA: Fantastic! We did buy a bottle of 20 year old Tawny (Port) from Langmeil which we shall be enjoying on New Years with some friends of ours - lucky buggers!

Barossa Day 2
Saturday I awoke with an unlikely hangover... but after a good sunbathe and eat-up, felt well enough to soldier on with our second day of wine-tasting.
We drove to the local Farmers Market and treid all kinds of breads and home-made chocolates and olive oil blends then returned to the campsite for lunch. From there we walked to Penfolds to try some of the most lucrative wines from Australia - there you can buy bottles of wine for more than your average second-hand car! We returned to the campsite via Kaesler Wines.

Barossa Day 3

Petting the roos at Whistler

We checked out of the campsite in the morning and headed straight to Whistler where we not only sampled wines but petted their hand-reared kangaroos! They are so sweet and I have decided I want one. I have promised mum I will walk it regularly and feed it (and pick up it's poo).

Two Hands Wines

After Whistler we went to two-hands which had been recommended to us by a local girl at Ross Estate. We each paid $5 to sit and have our wines bought to us, a little out of the ordinary as you don't usually have to pay to test at Cellar Doors. We sat outside on the terrace and tried wine after wine, quite content with our little lot.
From Two Hands Wines we went to Seppeltsfield Wines where we were further educated on Fortified Wines. We tried all kinds of Sherries and Ports and were introduced to some of the bottles that aren't even available for tasting not to mention, way outside of our budget!

Luke with a peacock at Maggie's Farm Shop

We finished the morning with a trip to Maggie Beer's Farm Shop (the Australian celebrity chef) for lunch. There were loads of pate and pickle samples and we each got a basket of salad and pate for lunch. Maggie's main principles are cooking with fresh produce that is in season and keeping it simple. I am very sure that most people would agree with her after sampling her yummy food!

We left Barossa with full bellies and further educated palettes and set off in the direction of Canberra.

Coffin Bay & National Park

On Thursday 25th October we set off for Coffin Bay, world famous for it's scrumptious oysters.
We arrived in the evening and, after driving around a little, decided to find somewhere to park the camper up for the night - we have become much better at looking for spots to park up whilst there's still light as we have had a few experiences waking in less than desirable or rather odd spots!
There were very few spots around town as the town is very small, mostly a few houses belonging to fishermen and the absolute essentials in life: a coffee shop (doubling up as an oyster bar?), a convenience store and a liquor shop. There is a large campsite in the middle of the bay but we usually find campsites far too conservative (reserved only for times in desperate need of showers!), so we continued toward our main point of interest, the National Park.

Coffin Bay's National Park is about 300km squared. It is situated to the west of Port Lincoln and only takes about 50mins to get there. There is an $8 entry fee and a further $8 fee per night camped. We paid our $24 into the honestly box (cheaper than one night in a campsite, pfft!) at the park entrance and set off toward the bay. We took turns longboarding along side Autumn, holding onto the open window while the other drove - great fun but rather sketchy as we had to keep an eye out for crossing roos and emu!
We parked up by some public toilets (Of the long drop variety, more info on these later) and ran down to the beach immediately. It was getting pretty dark and was a little chilly so I started with the dinner while Luke trialled his new fishing gear. About an hour later Luke returned, windswept and broken hearted: he had cast his rod and snapped it! We ate dinner and drank some wine and decided that we would return to Pt Lincoln the next day to buy a new rod, after all - we had come to Coffin Bay to fish and I was keen to try my luck in the big pond also!
On Friday we made a fly by visit to Pt Lincoln, Luke bought a new rod and serviced the van, filling it with water and fuel, etc while I tackled the important task of sourcing the G&T and sending my bro a moonpig for his 18th (Happy Birthday again Jack!!). We arrived back at the bay and went straight to the beach to practice casting. It was so nice to look in the rock pools and collect 'pretty shells'... Luke was keen to fish so I had a bit of 'me' time. It felt like forever since I was last able to slowly plod along a beach picking up shells and deciding which one was the nicest, not a care in the world but that one simple task, sounds silly but maybe this is what travelling is about after all - reminding ourselves of what it's like to play again! Unfortunately we made no catches on Friday but we did rather enjoy our G&T instead...

We caught an Australian Salmon!

On Saturday we hit the beach early. The sun was shining enough to warm the chilly breeze so we were stood about waist deep while we were casting. After a few hours we witnessed a pod of 14 or so dolphins, riding in the surf. They were so fun to watch and so close to the shore! A few fishermen joined us shortly after we saw the dolphins and we realised that the large patches of seaweed, as we had initially judged them, were actually massive shoals of Australian Salmon which the dolphins must have pushed into the bay earlier!! We cast out with a mixture of panic and excitement - I can see why they call fishing a sport - I got such an adreneline rush! Luke cuaght one which he bought in only to throw back as it was a little damaged but he got another bite only moments later. I shared some of the fight but this Salmon was big and strong and had to hand it over to Luke after a short stint for him to make the final beach. After we beached it we gutted it on site, sharing our unwanted bits with the local albatross (they are HUGE!). We washed it out and took it up to the camper where we filleted it and pan fried it for lunch, putting the remaining fillets aside for dinner. We were told by a local fisherman that he had never seen such big shoals and that we ad caught a bigun'. We were quite proud!

Preparing our lunch... and dinner!

After we ate lunch we saw what appeared to be seals around the area the Salmon had been - It all seemed to be following some natural order as minutes after the seals came, along creeped a shark slowly scavenging in the shallows just metres from where we had been standing waist-deep earlier on (Eeek!). 'Now THIS is Australia', was all we could keep saying!

At the foot of a big sand dune

We walked up the bay after (taking care not to enter after our shark witnessing) and explored the white sand dunes 5 or 6km up the bay, if you haven't sampled sand dune jumping, I recommend it. Needless to say, we slept like babies that night!
 Early the next morning we left the park and returned to Pt Lincoln where, in a moment of spontaneity (often mistaken for madness) we decided to make the 650km return journey to Adelaide. In one journey. Nutters.
We set off at 2:30pm and arrived 10 hours, one takeaway roast chicken, an expensive hot chocolate and a minor tiff later at 12:30am Monday morning, where we parked up at our familiar spot in Henley.

Port Lincoln

Toward the centre of the coast of South Australia sits Port Lincoln, a small fishing town. The town is quite wealthy as it sees the majority of Australian seafood pass through its port. It is also home to the Great White Shark. Yes that's right... this is Australia!

Whyalla beach

We stopped at a few points in between Adelaide and Port Lincoln. Port Augusta, Whyalla and Cowell (no Simons mind..) in that order. Whyalla is the second third largest city in SA with Adelaide and Mount Gambier being the larger two. That's about all the info on Whyalla I can provide... it's a small city, probably better referred to as a large town. We had a free shower at a campsite here (they didn't know so technically we borrowed/stole their shower water but we did really need one!), filled our tank and food cupboards and slept a little out of the city on the 'wetlands' where their storm water drains off. Pretty nice place actually and we met a lovely Dutch lady who gave us some tip-offs for Pt Lincoln as they were from the area.
Oh I nearly forgot! Whyalla has a beautiful beach with long shallows. You could wade a good 1.5km or so and still only be up to your knees!

When we arrived at Pt Lincoln on Tuesday 23rd October (it's been ages since I last blogged!!!) the first thing we did was head for a fishing and tackle shop as we had heard that sea fishing down this way was an absolute must. Armed with our new prized possessions (the finest lures budget traveller funds can buy) we moved the camper to 'Billy Light's Point' on the very southern point of Pt Lincoln, where we ate some local fresh fish and slept the night.
On Thursday we had our first scrambled eggs in the camper, courtesy of Master Chef Don Luca, did a big food shop and set off merrily for Coffin Bay. See next blog for details...