Travels in Australia - Andy Webb 2003
Adelaide and Kangaroo Island
Friday 27th June - Adelaide and Hahndorf
After being helped with our bags we were driven by Marg and Fred to the airport where we were to meet another of Helen's friends', Valerie. Marg and Fred were a really friendly couple, Marg seemed to have an endless enthusiasm about her country and to make sure if we were having a good time. After a delay of just under an hour and all the friends reunited we headed to the central market in Adelaide, after spending about 30 mins doing the circuit of the car park we eventually found a parking space more suitable for a toy car rather than a real one but it sufficed.
The Central Market is a vibrant wash of colour and noise, with stalls selling every vegetable and fruit you can imagine, stalls selling every sort of meat and fish, as well as tea and coffee stalls. Marg picked up some supplies for Sunday's BBQ before we went in search of food. We settled on the large Asian food hall which has seating in the centre and a wide choice of stalls selling everything from Thai, Chinese, Sushi, Vietnamese and Malaysian food all at very cheap prices. Quite a few were self service, so I opted for one which seemed great value for money. It included soup, which I wish I hadn't got because it was more akin to wallpaper taste and I only had a few mouthfuls. Also the plate I was given was more like a large tea saucer, and it was quite an art to cram everything on without also swiping everyone else's food off their plate with my backpack. Needless to say, the food was great, and I was quite relieved that I'd had a small plate as I was quite stuffed.
Just as we were about to leave the heavens opened, so we were treated to a car tour of Adelaide through steamed up windows. Adelaide on the surface looks like quite a bland/concrete city especially in the rain, but I was convinced that there was much more to Adelaide than meets the eye. We stopped off at Tandanya, an aboriginal cultural centre, which has a gallery (which was shut), cafeteria (which was shut), occasional performances (just missed one) and a shop which had a fine selection of digeridoos, aboriginal art and music. A video by David Hudson on how to make digeridoos and play them kept me occupied for quite a while, so much so that I had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of Tandanya!
Next we dropped our bags at Marg and Fred's house which was situated in the aptly named Norwood*, one suburb away from the centre of Adelaide. We drove out into the Adelaide Hills to the nearby village of Hahndorf, which was a german settlement dating back to the late 1800s. The German influence was apparent here with quaint cottages, giftshops and sausage shops. We checked out the Hillstowe Wine Centre and where we sampled a bit of wine before browsing the shops. I have to admit that this is one of my least favourite past times, and for most of the time I was wandering around aimlessly while the girls were in the shops. I ventured into a small bar/cafe which appeared to be shut, but there was a roaring fire so it looked quite nice. I got talking to the German owner, but found his one word responses too hard to bear so thanked him for showing me around and promptly left. Helen rejoined me and we purchased some fantastic cheesy peanuts before happening upon an old shop which sold a large selection of belts, boots, hats, leather jackets and flaming galaars. They even had a moody rabbit at the back which looked like it could kill you by staring at you, this taken into account we left. Next door we found a sweet shop which seemed to stock almost every type of sweet that one could remember from their childhood: aniseed balls, cola bottles, gobstoppers, strawberrys and cream, sherbert fountains to name but a few. Resisting the temptation to ruin my teeth even further I opted on some chili chocolate, which actually quite firey.
Back at Marg and Freds we had a beautiful but large meal of the best Pumpkin soup I have ever had followed by Lasagne mixed down with a selection of fine wines. As we only had 2 nights in Adelaide, me and Helen had arranged to meet Marg's son Todd for a drink. For this occassion, I had decided to wear my Taste of Croydon T-Shirt which I had won at as pub in Croydon back home. However, Marg warned me that I might want to reconsider, as Croydon was actually a really rough suburb of Adelaide and has a reputation of not being liked, I decided to take my chances on the presumption that it would be a good conversation point. Our destination was the Grace Emily Hotel which was about 30 mins walk away via the centre of Adelaide. Adelaide seemed to come alive at night, with lots of vibrant bars and live music. The pub was quite busy when we arrived but was a suitable venue for the night's proceedings. Helen managed to locate Todd, from recognising him from a picture at Marg and Freds. Todd was here with his wife and mate, Craig. I can't remember what we talked about, but we all got quite drunk on Cooper's Draught, watched a very good singer (apparently a lead singer from a major Australian band) and then some bizarre electronic outfit, by which time the music was just background noise. The one thing I liked about this place was the atmosphere, the friendly people and the fact that you can watch great music for free. Oh and no-one asked me about my T-Shirt!
*Norwood is also the name of an area just outside Croydon where I live in the UK, I found that a lot of place names in Oz were copies of UK ones, in fact there is also a Croydon just on the outskirts of Adelaide, it supposed to be a rough place, I guess some names just attract trouble!
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Hahndorf |
Chateau Dorien |
Barossa Valley |
Saturday 28th June - The Barossa Valley
We drove out (or rather were driven) out into the Barossa Valley, famous for being one of the main wine making regions in Australia. The landscape reminded me of a cross between France and parts of Kent with rolling hills and damp weather. Our first stop was the Chateau Dorien Winery just outside Tanunda, entry was via a craft fair which seemed to be pretty empty as though they hadn't told anyone about it. The winery itself had a collection of pictures on its fermentation chambers which depicted the history of the winery. They had some great ports to try, including a chocolate orange one that was quite special, and we made sure we tried every one! Next stop and a little bit light headed from all the wine and port we headed to the Seppelt Winery in Seppeltsfield which is set in grand surroundings including an avenue of palm trees on its approach. Once again, unfortunately, more wine tasting was involved. Once we had satisfied our taste buds we went in search of food. We stopped off at the Cafe Europa in Tanunda which had a nice cosy feel with great organic produce. Me and Helen settled for a lunch of tea and falafel salad.
After lunch we checked out the Jacob's Creek Visitor Centre, which is the more modern of it's counterparts and also had a fairly interesting exhibition charting the history of wine in the region. We then headed to the little known Whispering Wall, which is effectively a large dam, but it also acts an audio receptor, meaning that you can have a conversation with someone the other side of the dam. We also bumped into a couple of people one of whom was a girl who lived in Eltham, only 10 miles from where I live back home, small world. On the way back we drove one of the most perilous roads in Southern Australia, the gorge road, apparently it has one of the highest fatality rates, each death indicated by a black marker by the side of the road. Fortunately, we survived and were dropped off at the Griffin's Head for dinner in the centre of town.
After dinner we had made a decision to go to one of Adelaide's most famous music venues, the Gov. However, we slightly miscalculated the distance and found that our walk took 50 minutes rather than the 20 minutes that we had been told. Eventually we found it, and weren't disappointed tonight they had their 10th anniversary party of a late night musical extravaganza. We entered through a marquee, paid our $10 entry fee and were given coloured garlands to wear however we saw fit. It was quite busy filled with a surprisingly large number of middle-aged people some dressed in full country apparel. The pub was split up into 4 musical areas, the biggest at the back where all the main acts were on. As soon as I went to the bar I was curtailed by a pissed avante garde ponce in a suit sipping red wine, he ended up taking offence that I was only in the country for 3 weeks and promptly lurched off. At the front there were some acoustic acts in a very hot and busy room. Upstairs the rock/metal room could be found, which in the end just seemed to be one band playing to their mates. During the middle of the set, one of the chandeliers starting dripping melting plastic onto one unfortunate girls hair which promptly went up in flames. A heroic bystander gave up his pint which went all over her, but luckily doused the flames without any injury except hair damage. It turns out the chandeliers were made out of plastic and had candles stuck in them. You mustn't laugh but it was extremeley hairlairious!
The highlights of the night were the Satellites, a kind of Dolly Parton meets Elvis Rock-a-Billy band who went down extremely well, before the headline act, Whiplash came on with a blend of Irish Folk Rock and sent everyone home happy
Sunday 29th June - Kangaroo Island
Sunday was Valerie's birthday so Marg and Fred had arranged a BBQ, while the preparations were being made, me, Helen and Valerie went on a classic Sunday stroll alongside the Adelaide Racecourse and parklands. Despite Adelaide's seemingly concrete persona in the Centrex it has a lot of beautiful parks and gives the impression that it is more like a large country town than a city. On our way back there was some kind of racing event involving various bicycle type contraptions which looked quite fun. Back at Marg and Fred's, a delicious spread had been laid out in their back yard, which wasn't actually so much a backyard but a middle yard decorated with various pottery and art from Peru and Africa.
The food was lovely and we were sorry when we had to leave to catch our afternoon bus to Kangaroo Island. The bus journey from Adelaide Bus Depot took about an hour and a half giving lovely sunset views of the Adelaide area coastline. We arrived at Cape Jarvis at dusk in time for us to catch our ferry across to Kangaroo Island. There seemed to be a large number of teenagers catching the ferry, making us wonder if they went across to the mainland for the nightlife and weekend jobs. The journey was fairly uneventful and took about 40 minutes.
We were booked into a hostel on the coast at Pennies which was only about 2 min's walk from the ferry. After the minimum amount of fuss, we were shown to our room which had all the basic amenities for one nights sleeping. There didn't seem to be much open so we found the nearest store and bought a snack dinner before heading across the road to the penguin sanctuary, where we were booked on a night tour.
It appeared we were the only people on the tour when we got there and our guide who looked like the 'yes yes no no' man from the Vicar of Dibble informed us that there would be a short video presentation after we had looked around the museum. There wasn't much to the museum in fact it looked more like a primary school classroom and the video was silent with our guide doing the commentary. Anyway we weren't here to see a video we were here to see the penguins and aided by our guides special red torch we were able to get a close look.
Fairy Penguins are smaller than your average London Zoo penguins and we found that we could have stayed their for hours watching them play, kiss and make their strange noises before we were taken over by a large American tour group. Anyway we said our goodbyes and went for a walk along the beach in the moonlight, on the way back we spotted some wallabies feeding on the grass, which as they say, was nice. That night we could hear the Penguins all around us, perhaps they were encircling the building ready to take it over.
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BBQ |
Road to Cape Jervis |
Fairy Penguins |
Monday 29th June - Kangaroo Island
We had an early start for our one day tour of KI, once again it looked liked we would have a pretty exclusive tour, just us, a german guy and the driver, the same guy who checked us into our hostel the night before. Kangaroo Island is quite a large island, it covers an area of 4,500 square kms and has a lot of unique flora and fauna. Because of it's isolation from the mainland it has remained pretty much untouched. Our first stop was Seal Bay, home to the Australian Sea Lion, apparently we were visiting at the best time of year for viewing wildlife and we weren't disappointed. Despite the fact that it was winter it was still T-Shirt weather and the sun was beating down. We checked out the year old visitor centre which was very informative before heading down to the beach where we witnessed groups of sea lions basking in the morning sun.
We were able to get closer to them on the beach, where we saw a mixture of young and old. At one point a young pup came right up to us to examine us, apparently the older they get the more they stay away from humans and they have been known to give a nasty bite, so we decided not to feed them our German friend! On the way back we saw what looked like a dead sea lion being pecked at by crows, however it appeared he was just having a nap, to our relief. I never worked out, though, why they called it Seal Bay when they had Sea Lions there, though.
After Seal Bay, we stopped off at a place called Little Sahara, which was effectively a large sand dune dumped in land. Our driver was to prepare us cake and tea while we went for a stroll on the dune, although I seemed to get quite confused and thought he meant we would meet him at the tea rooms, obviously they haven't been built yet, and I guess they never will!
After tea we then moved onto Vivonne Bay passing a rare collection of bizarre post boxes, ranging from old fridges to oil barrels. Vivonne Bay is the only safe harbour on the south coast of the Island and is a base for cray fishing and game fishing boats, I suspect that in high season it would be very busy, but it was deserted today. We stopped off at Point Ellen which offered great photographic opportunities with the crashing white surf of the Antarctic Ocean and the foreboding rock coastline.
The weather had started to turn by the time we reached the Hansen Bay Koala Sanctuary just inside the Flinders Chase National Park. Armed with parasol sized umbrellas we went koala spotting, we spotted at least 4 balls of fur high up in trees not moving. I got the general feeling that despite their loveable appearance, Koalas are generally disliked because of their ability to destroy thousands of trees. Anyway they seemed fairly happy here, even if they appeared to be eternally asleep. We drove out into the bush land of Flinders Chase for lunch, where amongst the scrub bushes we found a ready prepared BBQ area with canopy. Within 20 minutes our driver had cooked up a hearty meal of gammon ham with fried pineapple and salad which was very tasty.
Next stop was the Flinder's Chase Visitor Centre which is a relatively new construction and tells the whole story of KI's history, flora and fauna and is definitely worth a punt. Down to the south-western tip we headed the main seal colony on the island at Admiral's Arch where they have a large collection of New Zealand Fur Seals. To be honest after seeing the sea lions up close early today, I wasn't particularly enamored with this place especially as about 1000 tourists seemed to descend on us while we were there. I guess when you've been used to having beauty spots to yourself all day, you get a little selfish. Our final stop was the aptly named Remarkable Rocks, which were indeed fairly remarkable, giant sculptural shapes carved out of years of wind erosion.
Our journey took us back in time for the half seven ferry and in time for a quick reunion with the penguins, we were rewarded with a spectacular parade of penguins marching up from the sea to their home. It appeared that when they got to a certain point they were stopped in a line by 2 other penguins who seemed to be checking that they were dry enough before entering the enclosure, I guess it could have been my imagination though!
We finally arrived back in Adelaide some time after ten, hoping to find somewhere open for a night cap, but everywhere seemed shut, perhaps Adelaide is a weekend place, we did however come across some rather spectacular bronze pigs in the main precinct though.
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Sea Lion Close Up |
Koala |
Remarkable Rocks |
The Great Ocean Road (Coming Soon) >>
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