17th Feb 2011
When someone says to you keep a look out for Tiger snakes as you are about to set off on a nature walk doesn’t exactly fill you with eager anticipation. This was how we started our environmental nature walk at Banrock Station the famous winery 70 kls north east of Waikerie. Banrock organisation have developed areas in one of their vineyards into an environmental park including a large wetlands where bush walks give you access to bird hides that have been set up to watch the numerous waterfowl frequenting the wetlands such as black swans, ducks, cormorants, pelicans and many, many others. We enjoyed the walk but couldn’t access a lot of area as it was inundated. We didn’t see any snakes.
Something you don’t do is throw sticks into the bush when your wife is not looking. The sting from a humourless wife is probably as bad as a bite from a Tiger snake anyway.

Over the past four days, using Waikerie as a base we have systematically travelled around the Riverland region following tourist trails, visiting country towns, talking to people, exploring unmarked dirt roads and generally making sure we saw as much of the area as was possible. Every time we had an opportunity to get near the Murray River we would do so taking in the scenes of high sandstone or limestone cliffs and vistas of huge wetlands being created by the now flooding Murray. The water itself is not the horrible silty muck that inundated premises in the recent Brisbane flood, it is coloured of course but is sure to do more good than harm and no-one is complaining.
As you drive through this region you pass kilometre after kilometre of grape vines, citrus, stone fruit, pear and apple orchards, olive groves, almond nut trees and I’m sure one large orchard with unusual looking fruit bearing trees was actually immature pistachio nuts.
We stopped at a roadside fruit stall where we purchased huge peaches and nectarines $3.50 per kilo, tree ripened and absolutely beautiful, a 1/2kg bag of pistachios $10. Nancy tells me it was all good value.
On one of the days as previously mentioned we visited Banrock Station winery and environmental park, we had lunch there sitting on a shaded deck high on a hill overlooking a section of vineyard with a beautiful back drop of Murray wetlands and washed lunch down with a great glass of red wine, very serene and picturesque, very enjoyable, very more-ish. Even Nancy had a glass of wine but not red and I think it was St.Valentines day. Amongst the significant towns we visited over the few days were Berri, Loxton and Morgan. As you enter Berri you pass the Berri Estates fruit and wine processing plant and it is colossal, taking up a substantial site on both sides of the road huge stainless steel pipes conduit either fruit juice or wine from one side to the other like a large bridge over the road. Morgan is significant to us, on the particular day we included Morgan on our itinerary we had crossed the river by ferry at Waikerie and were well on our way to Morgan when we came across a country café established in a farmer’s front yard. We had read about this little place in a local brochure advertising homemade cakes, jams, soups etc, local arts and craft, so being morning tea time (haven’t a clue what the time was but it was morning tea time), so I made the corporate decision to pull in. The smell of home cooking was unreal and we waited ten minutes for fresh scones to come out of the oven while we studied some really nice little water colour paintings by a local artist and then sat down to a pot of tea and a plunger of coffee, hot fresh scones, homemade strawberry jam, fresh cream and a large portion of chocolate, hazelnut slice, it was to die for.
Morgan is also significant for historical reasons, during the halcyon days of paddle steamers and cargo boats plying the Murray, Morgan was considered to be the busiest inland port in Australia. Today dozens of riverboats and house boats use Morgan as their base, the town itself is fairly small but it has an interesting marked heritage trail encompassing numerous old dwellings and buildings still in use and in pristine condition. Two attractive old remaining pubs on opposite corners of the road conjure up mental pictures of waterfront days long gone and no doubt they are still very popular.

Friday we drove back to Victor Harbor in heavy rain, apparently it’s the tail of the cyclone that formed in WA and is supposed to move through over the next 6-12 hrs at the moment it is bucketing down and has been all day so I’m not sure when the 6-12 hrs is relevant from.