The Wine Regions

07/01/2011
I feel for you people in Queensland coping all the rain and it probably doesn’t help when I tell you that it hasn’t rained since we’ve been in Victor Harbor and my brother in New Zealand tells me they need rain there, mind you two weeks without rain in NZ and the government declares a national disaster.
So you will have guessed we are still at Vic Harbor, Sunday evening Lisa and Reni our Swiss friend fly back to Brisbane and reality, Lisa is back to uni next week and I think Reni has one more trip somewhere before she returns to her home and family in Switzerland. Can you imagine being away from your husband (or wife) and family for 7 months just to learn English I think they are courages but as she said Skype helps to make it easier. Actually it may not be that bad.
Once the girls have gone back I’m not sure what we will do at this stage, we do have to get the roll out awning repaired so I guess it will revolve around that activity, when, where and how long etc.

Getting back to the weather, yesterday and today has been about 33 – 36 degrees, a nice dry heat. Prior to that it was in the low 20’s, warm enough in the sun but a cold breeze and very cold when the sun dropped in the evenings, everybody had warm tops handy all the time.

Since my last post where we spent time touring the bottom end of this beautiful peninsula, we have visited the McLaren Vale Region where vineyards and wineries with famous names like Wirra Wirra and Rosemount necessitated a visit and we discovered a highly successful watercolour artist’s gallery and studio, Lisa was so taken with one displayed painting she purchased it. As we were the only people in his gallery at the time we had the opportunity to chat with the artist Brian Dobson, who turned out to be a really pleasant and interesting person, even invited me into his studio to see his set up. At Wirra Wirra, where the famous ‘Church Block’ is produced, we enjoyed a session sampling various reds and whites, on the bar counter stood a large open jar of chocolate coated jelly babies, Nancy spotted it and by the time we left (which wasn’t that long) the jar was pretty well depleted, obviously they evaporate because Nancy swears blind she only had a couple.
Surprisingly enough Nancy actually sampled the whites at Rosemount and enjoyed them, one called alcoholic lemonade got her giggling.
The following day we ventured north to take in the Barossa Valley and show our visitors a different type of scenery, grazing country that borders the McLaren Vale vineyards is replaced by grain growing properties and even the old houses are different. A visit to ‘The Lavender Farm’ and ‘Maggie Beer’s Farm’ were top priorities as far as Lisa and Nancy were concerned, fellas it’s a girls thing I’m just the chauffeur. Just Sunday style driving through all of these areas is great, seeing the huge wine operations with names like Penfolds, Wolf Blass and Jacob’s Creek is an eye opener and spotting so many popular wine brand names as we drove was like a game of eye spy. It was another long day but thoroughly enjoyable, including the scenic drive home which included a whistle stop in the German town of Harndorf.

Today Lisa and Reni took a bus trip to Kangaroo Island not cheap but a full day, they were picked up at 0700am and don’t expect to be back until 10:00pm. A text from Lisa earlier said it had been 35C perfect day and the place was beautiful, worth a weeks visit.

Something else we have achieved in the last couple of weeks, we have probably located every cherry farm, strawberry patch and blueberry orchard on the Fleurieu Peninsula, must admit it’s fabulous fruit.