Thursday 15th January 2004

Not a lot of activity today, just a drive around the Clare town site and surrounds. The Clare Valley only produces two percent of Australian wine, however when you look at the size of the valley, it probably does well to produce as much as that because it isn't a very large area.

We didn't visit any more wineries because when we sample their produce, we find it hard to leave without purchasing a bottle or two each, and we have the Barrossa Valley and McLaren Vale to visit in the next week or two.

Having seen a sign on the side of the road that gave directions to 'Neagles Lookout' we decided we would have a look over the town from that lookout. After driving up and down hills to get to it, we came to the conclusion that we must have been looking for 'neagles' because it is the first lookout we have been to that is in that bottom of a valley... certainly no sights of the town from there, in fact the only thing we could see was the other hills all around us.

We decided we might have better luck at another lookout marked on the map, it appeared to be shown as on a hill to the south of the town. With this one we came to the conclusion you must have had to walk through the bush to get to it because we couldn't find any roads or signs leading toward where it should have been. After those two attempts we called it a day as far as our sightseeing went and returned to the caravan for a well earned rest (well for a rest anyway!)

Tomorrow we move on and expect that we will end up in Gawler, which is on the train line and about a 45 minute train trip from the centre of Adelaide.

Friday 16 January 2004

Not a lot to report today, we packed up and moved from Clare down south through Seven Hills, Waterdale, Auburn, Rhynlie, Tarlee and Roseworthy to Gawler, all of this in 89 km. Gawler is about 42 km North of Adelaide and is on the end of the metro commuter train line.

The caravan park is fairly small but is a good one and only about 500 metres from the train station and not much more from the town centre. We may not have known about this caravan park if it wasn't for good friends of ours (Graham & Jocelyn Roberton) who have stayed here previously and recommended it to us.

We went for a drive around the town after we had set up and 'one of us' became quite excited when they saw the fast food outlets, Subway, MacDonalds and particularly KFC, unfortunately the 'other one' didn't take the hint so we had caravan (home) made sandwiches for lunch.

After lunch 'One of us' had to get into the town centre because they noticed a Coles and a Woolworths shopping centre, returning with our wallet being $70.00 worse for wear. We checked out the Rail Station and have already bought our train tickets (purchased from the caravan park office) to go into Adelaide in the morning as it is our 30th wedding anniversary and we intend to wine and dine in Adelaide to celebrate the occasion.

We have booked in to the Gawler Caravan park for three days but anticipate we will stay longer.

Sauturday 17 January 2004

Where did the wining and dining go????. Last night there was a small hiccup when 'one of us' dropped and broke an empty wine glass that had previously had white wine in it!

Last night also ended with a little babysitting for a young mother visiting her brother in the caravan park. While we were sitting outside the caravan, two little girls were playing, running down a slope toward our caravan. The game went on until they actually ran down into our caravan, then they saw the computer screen saver showing images so they sat down for a longer look. Then they discovered the 'Upwords' game we had spread out on the table so they played a game or two of that (Their own version). Their names were Hollee (3 1/2 yrs) and Ebony (5 1/2 yrs). Their mother checked on them regularly but was happy to have them looked after - I don't recall offering but they were rather cute and exceptionally well behaved. In the end we had to send them back to their mother so we could go to bed - us oldies need our sleep.

Today, after a little shopping at Coles, we went into Adelaide by train with the idea of having a look aroung and maybe going to a movie. The second part was achieved first, but after viewing 'Cheaper by the Dozen' (Light hearted comedy worth viewing) 'one of us' had to do a bit of shopping in Harris Scaff and after that it was a bit late to do the wining and dining bit, so we returned to Gawler.

Adelaide is a city like many others I guess, and we can't make to many comments about it at this time because we didn't really see much other than the shops and the city mall, however we did enjoy the day trip into Adelaide.

The one thing that I did notice, in fact couldn't help noticing was the amount of graffiti vandalism along the rail tracks. Anything that could be tagged has been tagged and the vandals may think it is clever or attractive, but we think it is such a pity that the first trip into Adelaide was through so much ugly and damaging vandalism.

After returning to Gawler 'one of us' was extremely ravenous and it was time to heat up the finger food, open the bottles that were given to us by Travis & Lana and commence the wining and dining that was supposed to start at lunchtime.

Tomorrow may bring a rest day, after which the Barossa Valley is on the agenda because we just discovered that Gawler is on the edge of the Barossa Valley.

Sunday 18th January 2004

The day started out with a quiet morning and 'one of us' did the washing while 'the other' entered location detaisl to about 270 of the images that we have taken since leaving Home.

After lunch we decided to go for a short drive that started in the direction of Elizabeth. We sought out the GMH Auto Plant in Elizabeth and took a photo of it for Lee, our son-in-law who is a died in the wool Holden man.

From Elizabeth we continued south and then found ourselves in Port Adelaide. From there we drove down the coast through the various suburbs until we reached Glenelg where we found ourselves in a long line of traffic that was hardly moving as it wound it's way past a ski board competition on the water beside us. It took us almost three quarters of an hour to get past this event, however it was interesting to watch the competitors along the way.

It was our intention to get down to Brighton from there, however the lack of road signs made it very difficult to find, particularly as we didn't have a good city map to go by. After taking a couple of wrong turns we decided time was getting on and the clothes were still on the line so we should start on our way home.

This time we headed inland and found ourselves on the east side of Adelaide City and traveled along the side of the many parks around the city centre. These parks are a credit to the designers of Adelaide and improved our impression of Adelaide enormously.

We arrived back in Gawler at about 5.pm which wasn't bad considering we were only going for a short drive in the first place.