Stonewell Cottages Barossa Valley Tanunda

... gum that still stands in the main street. When he arrived he was so desperately poor that he lived in the tree between the years 1855 - 1860, the first two of his sixteen children were born there. Two points to ponder here, 1. Having two babies while living in a tree, and 2. What would your life be like having sixteen children???????? Right, so all was not lost, we did see something on our drive, so turned around and went back into town. Maggie Beer's ...

... in Rieslings and Shirazes. With perfect timing, we arrived just as a harried Groovy Grape tour guide was shepherding his merry charges onto their bus. The lovely lady who guided our tasting was incredibly friendly and we tried some fantastic wines, smiling smugly at each other if she agreed with us when we identified apricot undertones or a burnt toast aftertaste. The final thing she shared with us was a tawny that tasted like Christmas pudding ...

... need a break from the vino. Just a couple of days... So Barossa was a real treat and we have yet another of these winery cycling trips in Marlborough, New Zealand in a months time so if it is only half as good as this one it will certainly be something to look forward to. Next stop on the To-Do List is Kangaroo Island, the Galapagos of Australia. We are dropping the car off in Adelaide today and then getting on a YHA (the backpacker people) arranged ...

... de vorba cu proprietarul care ne-a povestit, printre altele, de ce vinurile australiene folosesc capace insurubabile (ca la whisky, de exemplu) in loc de doape de pluta (zicea ca producatorii de pluta de calitate din Spania si Portugalia au contracte cu francezii si la australieni si neo-zeelandezi ajung doar cele mai proaste dopuri). Acest aspect nu ne-a deranjat catusi de putin pe noi pt ca oricum nu aveam tirbuson si dopurile astea se desfac mult mai usor ...

... one of those memories you store and treasure for the rest of your life. After about an hour we've left with heavy heart (hey, that's why we call ourselves "travelers;" because we have to travel :-) Five miles/8 km and 2 hours later we stopped for lunch at another winery - Skillogalee - where we got another bottle of Riesling but this time with some (relatively decent) food. After another hour of walking we got to our last winery for the day but, to our ...

... a visit. Next up was Rockford Winary - my favorite. Without us even asking the girl ran us through every red, white and fortified culminating in wines we shouldnt have even been tasting as they were $100+ a bottle - we wernt complaining! It was an amazin little cellar and everyone was so nice and helpful, we had a great couple of hours chatting to people - it was really nice, also some of the best wine I have tasted. From there we went over to a viewpoint ...

... paper and having a go at the crossword - how very civilised. Saturday was an action packed day as we headed to the rugby 7's at the Adelaide Oval which is a wonderful ground. What an action packed line up with 16 nations and games through till 8:00pm. England were terrible to put it lightly and so were most of the big guns and it was the likes of Kenya and Cook ...

So we headed back to Melbourne from Sydney and did it all in one day. We were in a bit of a rush and had to clean the apartment out to get our deposit back. So we spent 1 1/2 days cleaning the place and after a night in Kerrry Janes house to get a bit of rest we headed off to Adelaide. The Barossa Valley was the plan. We stopped in a sshiity motel on the way to Adelaide after about 600km. It was a real one horse town complete with aging ...

... to "heritage".



Some of the vineyards were near the visitor's centre in the valley...



...and others were right up on the top of the local hills!



Alistair had a 4x4 estate, so it was great to be ...

... wire products). Secondly we saw a coke push where they heat the coal and after burning off the impurities they "push" the coke out into a train carriage that is then doused with 65 tonnes of water to cool the coke (Note they lose one third of this water to steam but they recycle the remainder and cleanse through a wetland area). They have found a use for all the scrap materials and even the slag is used as landfill and to build borders ...