Friday 26th November 2004 [ Coober Pedy - Quorn ]
Our days in the outback are getting less and less. In just a couple of days, we'd be back in the big smoke of the cities.
Adelaide would be the first major city we've been to in weeks.
The drive to Adelaide was a little too much, so we decided to head to Quorn for the night and to do the short hop to Adelaide the next day.
250Km south of Coober Pedy, we stopped at Glendambo to refuel. A sign said : "Welcome to Glendambo. Population... Sheep - 22,500. Flies - 2,000,000. Humans - 30." That pretty much describes it!
Kangaroo carcasses with wedge tailed hawks and crows devouring them, litter the side of the highway. We've seen our fair share of dead kangaroos, but not this many in one area. It's pretty depressing.
We finally made it to Quorn and got our head down.
Saturday 27th November 2004 - Saturday 4th December 2004 [ Adelaide ]
We were slightly ahead of schedule, so we decided to have a week in Adelaide and have a bit of R&R.
The Moonlight Cinema had just started in the Botanical Gardens in Adelaide, so one night we headed up there with a picnic and watched Lost In Translation.
A great night and Joo reckons an outdoor cinema would go down really well back home. I reminded her of the weather and it quickly became a stupid idea.
The Barossa Valley is where most of Australias's wines come from and with it being so close to Adelaide, we had to take a look. All in the name of research, we'll have you believe.
Picked up at 09:00 by the Groovy Grape bus, we headed out towards the Valley. We had to stop and have a look at the World's Largest Rocking Horse first though.
Matt, our guide for the day, told us that we'd be tasting over 40 wines today and to try and pace ourselves. Wise words although we paid no notice to them!
First stop was the Jacob's Creek winery. A fabulous visitors centre, where we were shown how to taste wine and then tasted 6 of their best wines.
After a brief stop at the actual creek that the winery takes it name from, we were then on our way to another winery.
Richmond Grove was were we had a great BBQ lunch including kangaroo. After a few more tastings, we were then off again over to Cockatoo Ridge winery. By this time, we were a little on our way. We still had 20 more wines to taste!
Our final winery of the day and this was the biggie. They had 20 wines for us to taste, including port and champagnes.
Staggering back to the van, we all climbed aboard and with the wine talking we made Matt stop at the bottle shop to pick up some beer for us all.
Once we were all back in Adelaide, we decided to carry on as we started and have a night out on the ale. We all had a very nice Italian meal and then headed out to a few pubs.
The next day we were not a pretty sight and we may have well just written the day off, as we did nothing but feel sorry for ourselves. We did manage to watch 2 great Aussie films - Gettin' Square and The Rabbit Proof Fence.
We met up again with Gareth, Julian and the two Laura's a couple of days later and went to the Moonlight Cinema, and saw 'Super Size Me'.
The YHA we stayed at was one of the best hostels we've stayed at yet. Well run, super clean, great atmosphere and a top kitchen.
Adelaide was a great place, which we both thoroughly enjoyed. It will remain in our memories as the place we had THAT hangover!
Wedge tailed eagle.
Kangaroo - deaded.
Welcome to Glendambo.
World's largest rocking chair.
Jacob's Creek
The creek, Jacob's that is.
Richmond Grove
Aussie BBQ
Wine number 15
Group photo
Wine number 31
Laura, Julian, Laura, Gareth and Lee
Moonlight cinema, Adelaide
All snuggled up on a rug.
Adelaide YHA
Mount Loftey
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