Resumption of Trip and The Barossa Valley

With Christmas and New Year now gone it was time to resume our second big trip. The plan was to leave on Monday the 4^th Jan so as to max out our time with our family. But I broke a tooth which meant I needed to find a dentist and a 24 hour bug I also got meant we could not visit James and his little tribe. So the revised plan meant that we left Friday afternoon and stayed over with James, Kristy and family and left the next morning. The funny/good thing was that as soon as we decided to stay the extra five days we contacted our workplaces and picked up work. Nearly two full shifts each, enough to pay for the crown I will need when I get back in March.

The other good thing was that I was able to finish off my project for being able to get the van on the front yard of our house block. It was a heap of work, cutting down a large tree and small trees, cutting a hedge and landscaping etc. Having worked my butt off at ‘work’ and working harder at home I was ready for another holiday. It was good to pick up some cash so we could enjoy this next and final stage of our second big trip.

So on Saturday the 9^th we drove to Griffith where our van was at Linda’s cousin Greg’s place. We had some nice pizza that night with Greg, Leonie and Doug and caught up with Rex and Jenny earlier that afternoon.

The plan for this final stage of our second big trip was to tour the Barossa Valley for six or seven days and then the Eyre Peninsular and arrive back in Sydney by the end of February. Linda’s sister and brother-n-law will be joining us in their van for the Eyre Peninsular part of the trip. We originally wanted to finish touring the York Peninsular from where we left off to attend Linda’s auntie’s funeral, however, as our resumption was delayed five days because of the broken tooth etc, we just won’t have enough time to fully enjoy the York, so we are doing the Barossa instead. Therefore we are doing a lot of kms in two days to get to the Barossa to start that stage.

Sunday morning we drove the 370km to Euston where the highway meets the Murray River. It was bloody hot and it was nice to have my first ever swim in the Murray. We could have stayed at a great free camp 15km short of Euston at Lake Benanee but we needed the power for aircon as it was so hot.

Monday morning we headed off on a 400km trip to stay at the Tanunda Discovery Van Park. We chose to stay there as the weather was still hot and would be till Wednesday evening and they had a pool and power which we need to stay cool and enjoy the holiday. The proprietor lady, Vivienne was very cool as she gave us free membership for Discovery Parks so as we could get a 10% discount with her whilst at the park. We just had to stay for three nights which is what we wanted to do because of the hot weather.

After a relaxed Tuesday morning getting a haircut from Linda we made it to the Chateau Tanunda winery for their 11.30am tour. It was a good tour of the history of the winery and the Chateau.

We then went to Maggie Beer’s Farm Shop for a lovely lunch. We did the Nature Walk and attended the 2pm cooking class. The class was held in the purpose built kitchen where Maggie’s cooking show, ‘The Cook and the Chef’ series was filmed. Linda enjoyed it and so did I. I may have learnt a few things but mostly nodded my head as if I was a clever student. We picked up some fresh vegies on the way back to the van. We picked up some more the previous afternoon as we had none on board due to not being able to carry any into South Australia. Both places were roadside style places and the vegies are great. Linda even applied some newly learnt tips from Maggie Beer’s cooking class for dinner that night. It was a good decision to go for the pool while this hot weather was with us. The swims were great.