Welcome to 2015

We arrived in Gawler, about 50km north of Adelaide in mid-December.  Our caravan is parked in the backyard of caravanning friends - fellow members of the Bushtracker Owners Group.  The festive season has been happy and busy.  We hope you have all had a happy festive season too.

We've had several trips into the Adelaide city area to meet up with friends and relatives, and to do some shopping.  It's been great to catch up with those we only see when we're travelling through South Australia.  We've had the opportunity to do some family history research - both of us have ancestors who were early settlers in South Australia; Cherryl's family date from 1839, making them pioneer settlers (pre-1845), and Robert's ancestors landed here in 1854.  Our elderly aunts and uncles have had photos, stories and other information that have filled in some gaps for us and have given us new directions to research; and we've been able to reciprocate with some of our information.


While we've been based at Gawler we've been able to explore the Barossa Valley.  A couple of visits to Maggie Beer's Farmshop have yielded some goodies for the pantry, including bottles of her famous verjuice.  Wines from some of Australia's best wineries in made their way to our wine cupboard - but didn't last long!

Nearby Kapunda is a pretty Barossa Town with heritage architecture and plenty of imaginative artwork.  The museum is comprehensive and it has a slate floor incorporating a map of the area.  The war memorial has a memorial to Sister Vivian Bullwinkle, who came from Kapunda, and is also dedicated to nurses and women who served in World War II.

Pastoralist Sir Sidney Kidman lived here and he donated his home to the Education Department - it is now the Kapunda High School.  We were able to have a look inside because the principal was there on the day we called in.

We had a day trip to Port Adelaide, to visit the markets and have a look around.  Port Adelaide has changed so much over the years.  Cherryl's grandfather was the superintendent of the Port Adelaide Methodist Mission for about 10 years (1956-1966).  Over the past 30 or so years it's had a facelift and, like Fremantle and Kalgoorlie in WA, has a burgeoning tourist industry with several excellent museums and many tours and cruises available.  

We visited the Maritime Museum which has displays ranging from indigenous exhibits to settlers arrivals, shipwrecks, wartime and modern maritime displays.  Well worth a visit if you're in the area.  There's also a family history research area where ship's logs and passenger lists are available online.

On one day trip to the city we toured the South Australian Library, incorporating the Mortlock Library which was the original library and museum for SA.  The free tour was very informative.  The bookshelves in the Mortlock Library are filled with old books - fiction and non-fiction - and anyone can come in and pick up a book to read within the building.  Again, there are interesting exhibits illustrating South Australia's colourful history.

Walking from the railway station to the library we passed several statues of prominent South Australians. Sir Mark Oliphant and Dame Roma Mitchell (former governors of SA), Mary Lee (suffragette), Lord Florey and Sir Lawrence Bragg (Australia's First Nobel Laureate for Physics) are among the bronzes nestled among the cycads.

After six weeks at Gawler we're giving our friends some respite and have booked 2 weeks in a timeshare resort at Goolwa at the south of the Fleurieau Peninsula.  We're only about 70km south of Adelaide and the weather is about 5C-10C cooler here.  Goolwa is at the southern end of Lake Alexandrina, one of the lower lakes of the Murray River system.  A couple of kms from our resort is the barrage which holds back the salty water of the Southern Ocean from the fresh water of Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert.

Across the bridge to Hindmarsh Island and we could see the Murray Mouth, where the waters of the mighty Murray River reach the sea after travelling from their source in the Snowy Mountains, along the New South Wales/Victorian border, picking up water from the Murrumbidgee (NSW) and Darling (Queensland and NSW) River systems, and then southwards through South Australia to the lower lakes and the sea.

While we've been here we've explored the Fleurieau Peninsula - there's plenty of great scenery - and have sampled some of the great food and wine on offer.  Local markets have given us the opportunity to support local businesses in Port Eliott, Goolwa and Victor Harbour.  About 50km north is picturesque Strathalbyn, a town with several bakeries/cafes and antique and secondhand shops.  We found a "junk shop" which was stacked and packed with all manner of bric-a-brac.

Cape Jervis, on the south-western tip is the place to catch the ferry to Kangaroo Island, which can be seen in the distance as it's only about 10km across the water.  Ferry tickets are expensive for this short journey ($80 each return for pensioner passengers and $188 return for the car) so we'll leave it for another time when we can take the caravan across and stay a couple of weeks.

 Just north of Victor Harbour are several dairy farms and cheesemakers.  We called into the dairy goat farm where we bought some delicious goats cheese and some wine from the nearby winery.  Then it was on to the Alexandrina Cheesery, an award winning dairy and cheesery with delicious milkshakes made from milk from their own very contented jersey cows and a cheeseplatter for lunch (with a doggie bag that will provide lunch for tomorrow too!).  The Fleurieau has a great range of food to choose from.

We're heading back to Gawler tomorrow and will be there for about a week to get the insurance work done on our caravan (at last) and to attend the Camping and Caravan Show on the 19th February.  After that we will be heading eastwards towards Victoria before making our way towards Canberra for Easter.  2015 is filling up fast and will be spent on the eastern side of the country.  We'll still manage to do many kms as we travel north and south during the year.