Monday, March 16

G'day mates! Apologies for the lack of pictures in the last posting, but I was in the Cairns airport at the time and for some reason it wouldn't let me upload pictures. Anyway, I've added them now, so you can go back and check them out if you like.

Meanwhile, here we are in Adelaide, getting ready to leave today to start our drive along the Great Ocean Road back to Melbourne. This ought to be a bit of an adventure as I've never driven on the left before or had to drive through a roundabout. Colin, since he's driven on the left before will drive us out of the city and let me take over once we are on the open road. Stay tuned.
Anyway, yesterday we went on a wonderful bus tour of the Barossa Valley. Like Cairns, Adelaide is built on the flats near the coast and is backed by hills, so the scenery is quite nice. The Barossa Valley lies within the hills northwest of Adelaide and is quite large, comprising three townships and over 50,000 acres of vineyard. The largest wineries in the Barossa areJacob's Creek (there actually is a creek), Penfolds, and Wolf Blass where we stopped for a tasting. Most of their wines are available in Ontario as the LCBO is one of their biggest customers, although I did try a really nice Cabernet Shiraz that they don't export.

Next, it was off to Kaesler's, a smaller winery, for lunch. With apologies to our foodie friends for the lack of gastronomic news coverage in this blog, we had a choice of kangaroo fillet, baked chicken breast, both served with potatoes and steamed veg, or a smoked chicken salad. Colin went for the kangaroo, but I figured it would be a bit too gamey for my taste, so I went for the smoked chicken salad. I did have a bite of the kangaroo, just to try it, and yes, it is definitely gamey, but it reminds me of a very soft textured beef. It actually wasn't bad, but I don't think I would like a whole meal of it.
My smoked chicken salad was very nice, shredded smoked chicken served on rocket with a mustard vinaigrette and shaved fresh parmesan. Dessert was a wonderfully rich sticky date pudding, served with custard and caramel sauce.

On the way back to Adelaide, we stopped for about an hour at a little town called Hahndorf, whose main industry is obviously tourism. Lots of funky little shops, cafes and restaurants. The area was originally settled by Germans, and their influence is readily seen in the Bavarian architecture, oom-pah-pah and polka music and the vast array of bratwurst, knackwurst, knockwurst, thiswurst and thatwurst at every eatery. Didn't partake, although we did stop at the Hahndorf Hotel for a pint. We each had Cascade Ale, which I found very nice. Reminded me of Steamwhistle.

To backtrack a bit, we arrived in Adelaide on Saturday evening around 6pm and by the time we got settled into our hotel, it was closer to 7pm. All the shops close at 6 here on Saturdays and are only open from 11am -4pm on Sundays, if at all. Luckily, the restaurants stay open longer and we found a wonderful hole-in-the-wall type Italian pizza & pasta place right next door to our hotel. Colin and I both went for the mix & match pasta & sauce. Colin had linguine Marinara which was chock full of shrimp, scallops, mussels and calamari in a tasty tomato herb sauce. I went for the tortellini al Salmone which had big chunks of salmon and mushrooms in a rose sauce. Huge, delicious portions, both!

I'm going to keep this relatively short as I've had a cold since we left Cairns, so I'm finding my patience with the Internet is pretty limited at the moment.
We are driving to a place called Mt. Gambier today, so depending on what the set-up is like, I may get back on after we've settled in there.

Cheers!


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