Slower Down South

It’s easier to understand the appeal of south Australia. After the adrenaline and action of Queensland and its cyclones, water activities, theme parks and the speed of Sydney with all its skyscrapers, down here they are seem much more content to take things at a slightly more leisurely pace.

Massive focus on food, drink and good produce – particularly wine with two of the world’s finest wine areas based here in the Barossa and McLaren Vale regions.

After leaving “New Cornwall” and cooking dinner one night at the campsite with a local bloke who’s great grandparents emigrated here from St. Neot! (small world!), We spent a day exploring the Barossa valley.

It was reminiscent of the scenes you see on tele where the legendary chef Raymond Blanc is driving his little old car through the vineries of southern France with the roof down and a picnic basket in the back seat.

 

All the winemaking buildings are beautifully extravagant and built with incredible attention to detail from locally quarried stone. Each vineyard seemed intent on being grander than the next as they got larger and more impressive as we drove round on our little tour.

One of the founding fathers of the region was a man named Seppeltsfied, think his first name was John. He set up one of the first farms in the region. The family’s empire grew very quickly and in his honor when he died they built him the mausoleum in the picture below…

Its bleedin massive and it sits right on top of a hill which provides 360° views of the families land. An impressive shrine! Must have been one hell of a guy!

After our fill of row upon row of grapevines we headed down to the southern tip of the region to Victor Harbor to walk the route of an old horse pulled tram line that used to carry mined cargo from the mainland across a 1km jetty to a smaller offshore island where freight ships could dock. 

The horse and tram still operates but now its cargo has changed to screaming children and camera-laden tourists. The waters around the jetty were perfectly blue and we were lucky enough to catch sight of a wild dolphin splashing near the shore and a lazy seal basking in the warm sun.

From there, inland up to Murray Bridge to spend a few nights by the mighty Murray River. Stretches more than 2000km and is the longest river in Australia, littered with houseboats, some of which can take you all the way from its source to the mouth via the lock system.

And now we’re in the town of Mount Gambier just shy of the South Australia and Victoria border. Passed through the town of Kingston on our way here. Not a single Rastafarian in sight, and in fact nothing else at all there really…oh yeah, apart from the ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE CRAYFISH THAT EATS ANYONE WHO GOES NEAR THE TOURSIT CENTER!!!

We’re getting bored now of all this camping crap. Sure it’s great for a week or two but we’ve been at it nearly 6 weeks now and the fun wore off a long time ago. It gets pretty tiring packing up all your stuff to move it 200km to unpack and rebuild you canvas house everyday before dining on a wonderful diet of rice pudding… But the fact is we came here to see as much as we could – not eat steak every night – and we’re cramming in hell of a lot more than most people every could on a typical family holiday and probably spending near enough the same. So we’ll stick to our guns and get on with the show.