South Australia

In Adelaide we took some time to wander around the city and then we drove out to the west coast and walked along Henley and Grange beaches. We drove to the summit of Mount Lofty for a view over the city but despite a clear blue sky the view was quite hazy. There had been bush fires near Port Lincoln so possibly this was due to some of the smoke from that. We had lunch with Linda Larsen and Pauline Turner in Adelaide before heading out to the Penfold Magill Estate Winery for a tour of their winemaking process. One cellar of their Penfold Grange wine contained $20 million (Australian Dollars) worth stored in barrels! The following day we drove out to the Barossa valley, there are vineyards everywhere up there. South Australia is very dry and all the grass is a burnt brown, but in the Barossa Valley there is a lot of green from all the vineyards. We stopped in Tanunda, the home of Jacobs Creek, and we went to the whispering wall at Barossa Reservoir. This curved dam wall allows you to whisper to someone across the other side of the wall 150m away and be heard clearly!

We spent the weekend with Gilbert Larsen (Linda's father) and he took us to visit various friends during our time with him, including Harley and Thelma Mason and their son Steve who own a fruit farm. We had a tour of their orchards which are very extensive and they do all the work themselves by hand. We saw our first pair of emus in the wild on the way there, but they barely stood still long enough to be photographed. On the Monday we left Adelaide to begin our road trip to Melbourne. We took the coast road and stopped at Victor Harbour and overnight in Robe before visiting Mount Gambier. Mount Gambier is a volcano and has four crater lakes. Three of them are just a usual dull green colour as is the fourth usually, but between November and March it turns an intense blue colour, for which no-one can find an explanation, hence it's name the Blue Lake.

Victoria

We crossed over into Victoria and stayed in Portland for the night, we drove out to Cape Bridgewater and got absolutely covered in flies there so we didn't stay too long. You could try and swat them away but they were very persistent and within seconds you were covered again, they were extremely annoying! Shortly after leaving Portland we got onto the Great Ocean Road and here we began to see some impressive Australian scenery! We stopped at the lookout points to see the Bay of Islands, The Martyrs, The Grotto, London Bridge, The Arch, Loch Ard Gorge and the famous Twelve Apostles. These sights are all natural structures made from the wind and sea eroding the soft sandstone. The photos will show you better than I can explain. We stopped at Peterborough and Geelong before arriving in Melbourne, seeing a very rare sight on the way - a koala in the wild!

We were staying on the outskirts of Melbourne but with a train station nearby we could easily get into the centre each day. We got around the city centre quite a bit on foot and there are nice walks along the river. We spent some of Sunday with Glynne and Ruth Francis and then Monday was Australia day. It was celebrated with typical Aussie enthusiasm with bands, parades and events going on throughout the day in the city, Melbourne was very busy as the Australian Open is also taking place there. Tuesday we met up with Emily (from our Quito to Santiago trip in South America) in the morning and went out to Mount Dandenong and had a nice lunch with views over Melbourne. In the evening we met up with some others from our trip in South America, Dave, Jo, and Yaniv who all live in Melbourne, and had a barbeque by the side of the Yarra river. We tried kangaroo steaks for the first time and it was really quite nice. The best thing is that kangaroo meat has virtually no fat so is basically pure protein!

A heat wave is promised for the rest of the week with 5 days in a row above 40 degrees, we are flying to Tasmania just at the right time!!