The Road to Coonawarra

It actually starts off as the end of the Road to Robe, but in the opposite direction.  We decided to do this on our first full day as the weather was somewhat below ordinary (intermittent drizzle and moderate wind) and thus driving to wineries seemed a better idea than walking or looking at birds.

The main thing about the Road from Robe to Penola, and thence Coonawarra, is that it was very flat and rather straight.   So fuel consumption was astonishingly even once the car warmed up.  The uptick at the end was pulling in and out of wineries,)

 The first winery was Patrick, which was a tad upmarket but the serving staff were very friendly and they allowed Tammy in.  We acquired a 97 point Pinot Noir.

The association of roses with the vines was consistent through the area.  Indeed, Penola seemed tobe making a feature of decorative roses in the street.

Next stop was Leconfield for a Cabernet Merlot.  Again Tammie was welcome.

We then drove up this avenue to Rymill, where we acquired a dozen 2013 Shiraz at quite a reasonable price for this area.

We called in to Zema but their offering to Frances was both a tad pricey and rated as OK.  Since they wouldn't allow Tammy in, we didn't fuss them with an order.

Penola has a few famous people associated with it.  It was the stomping ground of Adam Lindsay Gordon, a horseman and poet, commemorated with this bust.

 It was also a place where St Mary McKillop lived for a while, as a member of the household of the founder of the settlement.  It is astonishing how many places have some claim to her.  (The founding of the area was rather like that of Mayland, Essex where I grew up, in that the original squatter gave smallish plots of land to his workers.)

On getting back to Robe we called in at the brewery where I acquired  a few samples of the product and had an interesting conversation with the brewer.  He filters the beer through straw and the major fermentation happens in a milk storage tank!  It did seem like good brews however.  A review will be posted later.

We then went for a walk from the Jetty towards the lighthouse.  This was notable for nice scenery and disgusting wind.  The sea was very blue!

Some gnarly cliffs, explaining why the area is called the Limestone Coast.

Sea arches are not confined to Victoria!

A lighthouse of a very modern design.  A tad surprising as most navigation now is driven by GPS.

A swathe of what I call Scaevola sp.

A detail of the above.

Iam pretty sure this is a bean (family Fabaceae) but can go no further.  Perhaps my Eyre Peninsula books will have the answer?  Plant of the day.

Bird of the Day:  Australasian Gannet.  Common Sandpiper was a competitor and Brush Bronzewing would have won if I had seen it rather than just heard
Plant of the day: Purple pea with Scaevola a runner up 
Creek name of the day  Biscuit Flat Drain
Oddity of the day:  Tuesday was closed day for several businesses in Penola.
Striking thing of the day: Natural arches in sea out from the Obelisk.
Pie rating:  Bakery in Penola; Pepper pie.  Good flaky but not dry crust.  A lot of meat with a very good peppery taste.  Possibly a little too much liquid.  Equal to Holbrook.

Hopefully leaving the naff weather behind

Having borrowed a Polari term from The Princess Royal here are some words from the BoM:

Wet weather isn't expected to let up this weekend and Canberra meteorologist Sean Carson said what he consider to be "rubbish" weather on Friday would turn "feral" on Sunday. 

Friday was certainly rubbish, and Saturday wasn't much better.  In fact, Saturday achieved a status of at least rotten, with 15mm of rain in the evening.  At least there wasn't any snow.

Indeed Sunday turned feral, with snow starting about 7:30.  Here is the veg garden.

 As we drove out, Widgiewa Rd was appalling with about 5cm of snow settled.  I was not looking forward to the next 200km.  However when we got to the Plain there was no snow.  Getting in to Bungendore the hills of Kowen were well white.

 Right.  Having got that out of the way let us get back to the usual extrema of "XXX of the day".

Bird of the day:  Blue faced honeyeater, scavenging in a litter bin.  The big flock goes to Australian White Ibis.
Flower of the day: Acacia dealbata along the Hume Highway
Garden of the day: One at Fingal Bay with layers of Pandanus, cordyline etc.
Geological feature of the day: Cuttings in the sandstone going down to the Hawkesbury.
Outstanding Weather feature of the day; Snow!
Council behaviour of the day: This is a new category and could be a bouquet or a brickbat.  As I have said "Council", the latter is more likely.  Today the award goes to Port Stephens Council for banning dogs from most everywhere but not emptying litter bins so that rubbish is all over the place.

The drive to Sydney was fine.  There were few trucks but more cars than usual.  An annoyance in Sydney was the servo we heading for being shut, leading us to go to another which didn't offer a discount.  Then we found others which did, but didn't seem to be listed on the 'net.  Also the place we chose had a pump that cut out too soon, so we left about 10 litres early.

Whatever: we got outtathere and across the Hawkesbury.

After some farnarkling through Newcastle we got to the Port Stephens area.  The first thing seen here was a sign at Williamtown saying there was an "incident"and we should divert back to the Pacific Highway.  As this diversion was about 50km I decided to ignore the sign and see what the incident was.  I suspect it was a sign getting caught by a gust of wind as nothing else was evident.

On on towards Nelson Bay.  At Bobs Farm we spotted Murrays Brewery which had go some big wraps in a book on Australian beers.  One of their brews is called Moon Boy - I don't think Fred is a brew!

 It seemed very popular - including with Oriental tourists.  They were doing a US beer-style promo which explains the design on the pallet.

I ended getting 4 Dark Knight Porter (a good example of the style - lighter than a stout but tastier than a lager) and 4 Whale Ales (a very pleasant US style Pale Ale).

The camp seems good - the operators are very efficient and helpful and the scenery is great (seawards).

It is less great landwards, looking more like Gungahlin than anywhere nice.

As noted in the awards section above the Council seem good at banning things such as dogs,all spelt out on a sign, but less good at environmental stewardship, such as emptying bins.

The wind is very strong and it isn't hot: but at least it isn't snowing.

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Day 2: A day in Sunraysia

Today is intended to be a break in the drive, looking around two interesting Murray River towns.  Also buying some of the excellent beer from the Mildura Brewery.

We were a tad late getting up after an ordinary nights sleep.  After breakfast we headed off to see a couple of things in Wentworth.

The first of these was the confluence of the Darling and the Murray.  This was pretty impressive as a history/geography tick but not really that exciting as a visual spectacle.  The marker of the point where some early explorers forded (I suspect that means swam) across the Darling caused us to think a bit but we didn't find the dig tree.

What was impressive was the nearby Lock 10.  It was a rather nifty bit of engineering – especially the special routes built in to allow fish to swim up past the weirs - but the number of birds around was really good.  Pelicans, Silver Gulls, White-necked herons and Whistling Kites stood out.  All are fish eaters and I presume as the fish ladders attract fish they also attract their predators

We then drove past the old Gaol.  It is now a tourist attraction, but between that role and the centre of incarceration it had provided overflow classrooms for the nearby school.  

We carried on out to some sandhills.  They were OK, but not up to the standard of White Sands (New Mexico); Death Valley (CA) nor Coffin Bay National Park (see later).

Time was pressing so we wandered in towards  Mildura.  While still in NSW we went to look up the War Memorial in Dareton so we could tick that off.  Initially the ladies at the Coomealla Club denied there was a memorial there, but a third person said there was a plaque beside the flagpole at the school.  She didn't think it was a real memorial “as they don't have a march there on ANZAC Day”.  In fact it was a nice little memorial with 4 plaques to various conflicts. 

Some of the kids had - as is often the case in country towns - done a mural nearby on a school building.

We then took the Calder Highway, going into Victoria.  The area we went through had a lot of vineyards which looked very run down.  Many of them were weedy, some hadn't been pruned and a few just had the trellising.  Perhaps the dried fruit trade is in the dunny?  This got us to Merbein where a market was happening.  We checked that out and then attempted to find our way to the Mildura Brewery using a really bad tourist map.  We got there 20 minutes later than we had told our friends.

I like the Salvo's op shop being next door to the Brewery!  Inside all was gleaming steel.

Despite our lateness, and very slow service we enjoyed our beers and lunches.  As we had Tammy with us we ate outside  and she was very well behaved, only making one bolt to follow a punter into the brewery.  (This caused the punter to make a friendly reference to 'doorbitch' which proved he was quick in assessing the sex of dogs and suggested he had some experience of the seamier of life in Mildura.)  Frances had a Honey Wheat while I tried Storm Cloudy ale and Stefano's Pilsner.  Carol got a tasting tray so we sipped the entire range.  All good.

We walked the Art-deco tour of the city centre

and then strolled along the riverbank to Lock 11 which was not pet friendly so we headed back to a small sculpture park, passing through some  sort of kiddies athletic event.

We went to the Australian Inland Botanic Garden as we headed home.  Dogs were allowed on leads so they earn a huge tick.  A rather low  key place but quite well set out and it did a fair bit for the bird trip list.

We tried to find our  way to the indigenous walking trails around a lagoon at Wentworth but failed miserably.  As we were tired  after our day we headed back to our unit.

Bird of the Day:                             Australian Pelican

Plant of the day:                            Unknown flowering Acacia at the confluence!

Most interesting thing of the day:  The system of locks and weirs on the Murray

What we learned today:                  Fishways in the weirs.

The brewery's doors are opened wide,

And I am next in line;

The friends are met, the feast is set:

None hears small Tammy whine.

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Day 9 Buildings and Bottled Goods

Probably hang out in the area.  There could be some serious investigation of food (various German cakes, bread and sausages spring to mind) and bottled goods (there must a winery somewhere in the Barrosa that isn't suffering from kitsch fatigue and sells its booze cheaply).

The Arte Johnson character from Rowan aand Martin's Laugh-in played a storm trooper prone to pithy sayings.  When I worked in Adelaide we took his diction and a cliché from many war movies to come up with "You still haf relatives in der Barossa Valley?" as the ultimate threat from a colleague of Prussian ancestry.

If we did in fact have relatives in the Barossa Valley they would probably be seeing quite a bit of us!  The day was basically Frances's as staying in the Barossa was her idea.  Somehow a place less than 200km from Adelaide has always seemed like a day trip rather than a multi-day stay,  Indeed on this trip it was originally planned to just stay 2 nights.  However today was an excellent day and there are hopes for the morrow.

The night was interesting in a birdy sense, as whenever either of us woke we could hear Magpies carolling away. I presume this is one more element of a South Australian July being a Canberra September!

The small dog was continuing to vote for the Suffolks being the most interesting sight of the morning.

We began with a walk from our accommodation along Neldner Rd to Seppeltsfeld Rd. 

This was a very pleasant stroll past vines with lotsa nice gum trees along the road, occupied by many parrots.  The range of parrot species has been pretty good also: Adelaide Rosella, Musk and Rainbow Lorikeets, Red-rumped Parrots, Galah and little Corella.  The Gnadenfrei Lutheran church on Seppeltsfield Rd was very picturesque, especially with a well sung version of "The Lord is my Shepherd" wafting out from an early morning service.

Back in the road, the avenue of palm trees was, as recognised by many tourism operators in the Barossa, stunning.

The palms are also evident in this image, taken mainly to capture the decrepid thatched barn.  I doubt if there is anyone in the area who could do thatching these days.

After getting back home we took ourselves to the Information place in Tanunda and got a bunch of information.  Our first use of the information so gathered was to do the historical walk around Tanunda.  This was really good as the whole area seemed to have largely retained its historic character.  

The German gravestones were a highlight, 

with a special mention going to the memorial to Pastor Kavel who led the Germans (OK, Silesians - mny of them came from what is now Poland) from their homes to get religious freedom (and start the quality end of the South Australian wine industry- sorry Dr Penfold)!

The Kugelbahn (skittle alley) was particularly appealing as it was near Langmeil Rd and I have really enjoyed some Der Kugelbahn Shiraz produced by Langmeil Winery!

We then decided to visit the Barossa Brewery, but found they didn't open for a while.  As Frances had found where the local sewage ponds were located we filled in a bit of time there, adding several species of waterfowl to the trip list.  On returning to the brewery I found they could supply me with Organic Ale (5.3%) and Bee-sting Honey Wheat Beer (5%).  After my passing the plastic the owner asked if I had other plans for the day and on my response of "Yes, I plan to do as my wife tells me." he said "Ah.  A normal day then."

We then headed for Angaston, which town (IMHO- I did see it called a village) also had an historic walk.   The walk was a "join in anywhere" item which was a tad disconcerting as we ended up doing it in reverse, causing some issues from time to time.  The churches were interesting contrasts of denominational architecture - Anglican first, then Uniting:

and our old favourite question from country NSW "What have all the banks become?" came back as a good question.

 The pubs, usually remain as pubs.

Frances swung in to Angas Park Fruits (dried stuff) but found their prices far higher than we would pay (for similar fruit but other brands) in Canberra. 

After this we went to Nuriootpa which did not offer an historic walk, nor much else to cause us to put on the brakes until we got out to the Sturt Highway.  There was an interesting moment when we saw an official sign giving the population of 'Nuri' as 829 which seemed far too low.  At the other end of the town we found it was actually 4829! 

It didn't take us long to get to the other end of town as it was simply a commercial centre with very little of the old part of town in existence.  On the outskirts it appeared that modern suburban living was alive and well - or as close to alive and/or well as a modern, garden free slum can be.  What is it about the song "Little Boxes”, made famous by Pete Seeger, that people do not understand?

One conclusion we reached about this was that it is necessary to maintain a critical mass of historic buildings if the character of a town is to be preserved.  That had been done in Tanunda, and just about done in Angaston.  Nuriootpa had failed completely.   This view correlated very closely with the amount of traffic parked in the main street of each town.  (A similar comparison exists between Quebec City, Montreal and Toronto.  Many European towns and cities have got it right by preserving the historic centre and only letting the forces of evil loose on the outskirts.)

When we got to the Highway we headed for bow-tie central - also known as Wolf Blass Wines!  They were offering a special deal where a purchase of a dozen Silver Label earned a bonus six Shiras Vigonier.  That worked out to about $10.91 a bottle which is around the mark for a good bottle of red.

Our final stop of the day was at Maggie Beer's Farm shop where Francie acquired some excellent pate and a sauce.  The pate has been assessed on toast and rated extremely highly.  Well done cook!

Bird of the day:                     Pink-eared Duck

Plant of the day:                    Grape vine [They don't have to be pretty endemics!]

Interesting sight of the day:  German cemetery at Tanunda

What we  learnt today:         The importance of a critical mass in conservation.

 Each town brass-band, has got a hall:

Of yellow brick designed!

They play upon the ovals,

Their oompahs most refined

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Roadside conversations

For some reason my legs felt rather stiff and sore this morning!

We started the day by taking the small dog for a walk along Garden of Eden Rd (carrying her through the jungle  - aka rainforest – up to the road).  This was a very pleasant walk, especially compared to battling with the trucks and bikes along Tomewin Rd.  A ute full of DPI blokes went past soon after we had started and then came back out.  The second time they stopped for a chat.  This could have been:

• rural sociability; 
• rustic curiosity; or 
• checking up on suspicious characters 

(or any combination of the above).  However it was all very friendly - after nearly 5 years we can do country bumpkin quite well.

When we got to the start of the walk (or the end of the road: your call) I took a photograph of an abandoned Kombi-type vehicle.  It was unclear whether this was the jungle taking over or a deliberate bit of artistry.

At some point in this expedition I scored a photo of a spider - one of the very few we saw on this trip.

Just as we started to drop down through the jungle Frances noticed an echidna wandering across someone's lawn.  As well as the echidna, this shot shows the thatched roof over the cabana next to a pool: such an approach would be very unusual on the South Coast but fairly common up here (which probably says something about the relative ease of gathering palm fronds).

Then in to Murwillumbah for this and that.  This included me checking my emails and Frances sussing out the op-shops.  I took a few snaps of the more interesting architecture in the main street. 

When I got back to the car after that - Frances was sitting in the car doing quality assurance on a date scone- some guy was standing beside the car yelling at her.  Was he a National Party supporter objecting to us not driving a V8 ute?  Nope, all was cool: he was an honest electrician (possibly still a National Party voter, although the word honest may have to be retracted in that case) working on the shop outside which we were parked and he wanted to bag our spot when we left.  He was having to yell because the windows were up!

Frances commented that the punters of Murwillumbah – at least represented by those in the street and the op-shops - seemed a tad down-market compared to Woolgoolga.  I suspect her sample wasn’t exactly unbiased but it being court day probably didn’t help!  (The latter judgement was by me, having seen all the smartly dressed lawyers and their not-quite-so-well dressed clients sitting outside an edifice labelled ‘courthouse’.)

We headed off and as we went along had some discussion about how to get to our destination.  I knew it was in one direction and Frances kept talking about it being in another.  This became clarified when we realised I was heading for Liquorland while Frances was interested in the whereabouts of the Regional Art Gallery.  Since we went to both, this was really a question of priorities.

Liquorland seemed to offer what was needed (ie beer and red wine) for a reasonable number of shekels.  The only interesting bit there was a brand of beer called something like “Ïron Bar” complete with a picture of someone looking rather like Chesty Bond on the carton.  On reading the carton closely it turned out to have been brewed in Vietnam!

The Tweed Regional Gallery was a ripper (Frances rated it as the best Regional Gallery she had visited).  Rather large and with several display spaces.  One had a collection of Indigenous Artist prints with just about every big family (and most areas except the desert and Kimberly) represented.  That turns out to have been a touring exhibition from the Australian Maritime Museum.  They also had the Olive Cotton Photographic portrait competition which is run through this Gallery.  A very interesting set of work, including explanation of the various types of printing used (NGA take a hint).  The Gallery also specialises in collecting portraits and an excellent display of them around.  (I initially thought this was the Archibald on tour, but the quality was too high.) 

One work which seemed to go against categorisation was representations of each State’s floral emblem.  It was interesting that 7 of the 8 had labels of the form <State name> <vernacular flower name> <scientific flower name>.   In a display of typical arrogance the 8^th just had “Waratah” “Telopea speciosissima”.  Of even more interest was that the material used to create these works was cane-toad skin!

To top this off I stepped outside and noticed a large farm dam which managed to add three species to the trip list (of which Forest Kingfisher was the pick since they are supposed to have migrated away by now). 

Going outside also let me get a snap of some rock sheep.  Mounts Cougal form the far background.

As we passed back across the plain on the way home we got some photos of the after effects of canefield burning and stubble burning as it happens.

I took a walk up the road to get some snaps of this and that which I had noticed on my camera-challenged run.  The second image was not taken in Queanbeyan (perhaps this is something to do with names starting with 'Que..?).   If that was a crash from the road, I doubt if anyone survived this 20m drop.

 Mission accomplished, and as I was walking back a Ford Laser pulled up beside me.  It appeared to contain 5 lads whose appearance (such of it as could be seen around the sunnies and hoodies worn by most of the 5) and accents suggested they may have just come from Friday prayers.  The conversation went as follows:

• Driver “Excuse me, does this road go to Nimbin?”
• Me “Yes follow the road into Murwillumbah and there are signs to Nimbin.  Follow the road to Uki.”
• Front passenger “Ah.  Thanks mate.”
• Voice from back seat “Do they sell a lot of weed in Nimbin?”
• Me “I believe they have been known to do so.”
• Omnes “Ha ha ha!”

and off they went.  Obviously I am safe from charges of impersonating a police officer!

By this time the sky had become clouded over, and a couple of hours later it was drizzling when I put Tammie on the lead for a toilet stroll.  The moister weather had got the toads out, as I realised when I looked down and saw her nose to nose with one.  Fortunately she didn’t seem to realise what it was so didn’t try to eat it: cane toads are poisonous.  The required first aid is to stick a hose in the dogs mouth and make it vomit up the eaten material.  Trying to get Tammie to open her mouth when she doesn’t want to is a task removed from the labours of Hercules as being too hard!