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Great Ocean Road to Adelaide (Mon 2nd Feb - Sat 7th Feb)
On the road again after our long sojourn in Melbourne. In the past week we have driven along the Great Ocean Road, been wine tasting in the Barossa and sightseeing in Adelaide. We picked up our hire car in Melbourne (Kia again) - identical to the last one we had apart from the fact that the radio didn't work.
One route to Adelaide includes a 100 mile stretch of road called the Great Ocean Road. It runs along the Victorian coastline from Torquay to Warrnambool. The coastline is full of surf beaches, dramatic and unusual limestone rock formations, crashing waves and the odd lighthouse. All very beautiful but spoilt a bit by the bloody flies that attack you from all directions. I had to buy a hat with netting. I looked ridiculous and got funny looks from most people but it did the trick and kept the flies at least off my face. We spent the first night in Apollo Bay about 3 hours drive from Melbourne.The following day we visited Cape Otway and climbed Australia's oldest lighthouse. When immigrants arrived by boat from Britain in the 1850's? this was often their first sight of land. Later we visited the Otway Fly walkway which gives tree high views of the cool rainforest. Our second night was spent in a motel in Warrnambool. The highlight of the week for Gwen was joining a horse beach trail and cantering along a lovely secluded beach - something she's always wanted to do. Meantime I was busy trying unsuccessfully to get the car radio fixed. Later that day we drove over 500k crossing the border into South Australia (which is 30 minutes behind Victoria time) staying in the one horse town of Miningie. The highlight of the journey was being stopped by the police for speeding (20k over the limit). Fortunately he was in a good mood and let me off with a warning
Next day we drove to Australia's most famous wine growing area, the Barossa Valley about 1 hour north of Adelaide. We stayed in the heart of the Barossa in the small town of Tununda. There are over 60 wineries in the valley and over a 24 hour period we managed to visit 7 of them including the larger ones like Jacob's Creek, Penfolds, Peter Lehmann and McGuigans/Yaldara. The Barossa is famous apparently for its Shiraz wines and Eden Valley Rieslings so in general that is what we tasted. It was probably that and the 40+ temperatures that gave me the headache! The weather has been so hot here that the winemakers are wetting themselves about when to pick the grapes. Already some of the grapes are shrivelled and one report has predicted that production might be down 40% on last year.
Finally, we spent a couple of nights in the excellent YHA located in central Adelaide. I thought we had escaped the hot weather but unfortunately we have been suffering 43 degrees again. So our policy has been again to go anywhere that has air-conditioning. We managed to kill a couple of hours in a Borders book-shop and then hopped on to the Adelaide Explorer bus which took us on a 90 minute tour of the city. Adelaide is a beautiful city and our bus driver/guide gave us a fascinating tour and history lesson showing us all the sights of the city centre including the Oval Cricket ground, cathedral and parklands. For some reason the only people on the bus were a French family and ourselves. We also managed to fit in a trip to Glenelg, a seaside suburb of Adelaide and a long trek by bus to see "Slumdog Millionaire"
It has been strange week weather wise. We had cool and wet weather along the GOR but in the last few days the temperature has soared again with 2 days of 40 + The temperature in Melbourne reached46 degrees (hottest on record) and as you all know by now this resulted in many bush fires north of Melbourne and over 200 deaths. Never mind it could be worse, we could be going to Alice Springs. Oh sorry what's that you're saying Gwen - Alice Springs is our next stop!?
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