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23rd April 2006 – ADELAIDE
Autumn is a great time to visit our friends in South Australia and that part of the
country. We had met Rob and Suzanne Gale
on their boat Caviar when we crossed the Atlantic in 1997. They had the
misfortune to be dismasted 500 miles before reaching
Antigua, where we
met up with them again.
Rob and Suzanne were kind enough
to help David and I to rescue other friends 300 miles out from
Bora Bora in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in 2001. David and Rob were taken out to Tahiri, which was
wallowing in huge
seas and
strong winds by a French frigate from Tahiti. Chris had
already been taken off as he had been suffering from
dehydration,
due to oesophogitis, and poor Gerry had
been left to cope on her own for 3 days.
She was
also taken off by the frigate back to Tahiti, and David and Rob were left on board Tahiri
to bring
her back against the wind, with a split mainsail and poorly performing
engine this took them 5 days,
quite a
feat on a boat they did not know.
Chris and
Gerry with David celebrating Chris’s 40th and
David’s 61st
This was
on 1st June 2006 at Terrigal, half
way between Sydney, where Tahiri is moored
and Newcastle.
Terrigal, Gosford’s best beach village, just North of Sydney
to which
Meg and Rob on X-to Sea bought us when we visited them
over Easter at their home in Gosford.
Suzanne and Robs house, which
belonged to her Grandmother, built in
1900, S.E. of Adelaide
My 57th
Birthday just happened to coincide with ANZAC day. Rob had organised a
reunion of 6 ‘mates’ with whom
he had
shared lodgings in Adelaide called Lloyd House whilst they were attending University nearly
40 years ago.
What a
great opportunity for David and I to meet up with such a varied group of
true ‘Aussie’s and find
out how
their lives had developed. There was good material there to write a book,
if only I had the time to delve further!
Sharing the best of wine from Adelaide wineries on ANZAC day (my
Birthday) brought by friends for their Lloyd House reunion.
South
Adelaide’s coastline s such a
sheltered calm area, and stunningly beautiful with the red cliffs.
This blue
lizard lives in the garden, just what you need to eat up the spiders! We
had the fright of our lives, as a
huge hairy spider crawled out of the
vent in our hire car across the dashboard, David squashed it with the road
map,
before it
decided to give us a bite. It was a Hunter
Spider whose venom would have stopped our touring dead in its
tracks!
National
Parks are prolific along the South Australia Coastline. This gave us the
opportunity to get acquainted
with the
cuddlier wildlife
 
Joey
Koala
Yacca or Black boy is
this indigenous grass’s name
SOUTH AUSTRALIA’S WINE REGIONS
 
are the
country’s major producers of wine, and some of the best come from the
Barrossa Valley, the Adelaide Hills,
Mc Laren Vale (pictured) and
Coonawarra.
Visiting
the boutique wineries rather than the big well known ones is so much more
fun! Many of them have wonderful
restaurants
with views to enjoy whilst enjoying great meals.
 
like this
one at d’Arrenberg where
Cab Sav and Noble Riesling are just scrummy!
The Coonawarra wines are made on a strip of
land formed just inland of the coast by fertile red soil accumulating
on one of
the ridges, created by the uprising earth after the retreat of one of 12
ice ages during the last 500,00 years.
The
climate makes vines struggle all year, but the famous red soil and subsoil
and bountiful water cosset and spoil them.
French
–style reds, primarily from Shiraz and Cabernet have
starred
brightly here, and we found wines here that rivalled any of the great
‘Bordeaux’
Highbanks had been rated as one of the closest to Bordeaux’s best, and the owner, Dennis Vice, an American oenologist
who fell in love with the area after advising so
many of its wine growers bought a section for himself to develop.
He invited us to join him the only evening we were
there to have a ‘degustation’ of some of his best in his
charming home.
David
tasting Dennis Vice’s best of vintage Highbanks Cabernet Sauvignon
 
Highbanks’s
lodge for guests is a wonderful place to stay in amongst Australia’s best vineyards.
How’s
this for great countryside to drive through on the way to the Great Ocean Road, where the Ocean is
open to the pounding
waves
coming from the Southern storms off the Antarctic
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