Daylesford to Adelaide

Well we left Daylesford on a very cold and wet morning and it seems to be taking us so long to pack everything up still.  Poor Nick was drenched by the time we got on the road.  We were on our way to Halls Gap, but not without one more encounter with the grumpy caravan park owner.  We had somehow not hitched the van on properly (even though we both double checked) and he came to the rescue before anything untoward could happen.  Needless to say we check the hitching, pull forward a bit and check again now!  He may be grumpy but we were happy he is also observant!  The journey was otherwise uneventful, apart from Flynn inventing his way of saying 'are we there yet' which is 'play now please'.  We heard that a few times along the way.

Our first night in Halls Gap and it was my birthday, so we went to the local pub for dinner, which was lovely.  There was a big open fire burning, a kids room,  and it was a really relaxed dinner.  The next morning we had two very large kangaroos come very close to the caravan which Flynn loved.  Nick perhaps got a little close and may have got a bit of a fright when it looked like one of them was about to let him know to back off!  Always after a laugh, Nick then proceeded to impersonate a kangaroo and started hopping across the caravan park; he was still wearing his thermals from the night before- where was the camera?


We took Flynn on his first real bushwalk to Clematis Falls.  Not sure that he liked it that much as we dragged him away from playing football with some kids, and it was raining a bit!  He did seem to like the height at the top and was quite interested in the waterfall.  I also got to have some time to myself and walked up Mt Boronia, which had some really nice rocky outcrops and views over Halls Gap and in the other direction over farm land.

We took two nights to get to Adelaide, staying in Kaniva and Murray Bridge.  I drove into Adelaide and found it to be a bit hairy- such a long steep hill and to make things worse, half way down we seemed to have lost lights and blinkers.  We made it to the caravan park and fixed the problem pretty easily, but I needed a cuppa to calm my nerves!!

We had a fantastic few days in Adelaide.  Nicks mum Trish and her friend Heather met us for three nights.  We had a trip out to the Barossa, and visited three wineries and had lunch at Maggie Beers.  They were filming the day we were there, but only Heather was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of Maggie.  It was great to see her kitchen and we had one of her picnic baskets for lunch with some pheasent pie (even me being pretty unadventurous with meat found it delicious).  I was also lucky enough to have a girls day out and we went to the national art gallery and out to lunch to the Botanical Gardens.

Trish and Heather are wonderful with the boys, and it was lovely for them to be able to spend a few days with them.  On our final day, Trish offered to look after the boys while we packed up.  What she didnt realise was that Flynn also invited all of his friends at the caravan park along too.  Being a school teacher, Trish had all the children at the caravan park sitting at the table having an art class whilst Nick and I packed the van.  So the farewell was a bit teary, but we are looking forward to their next visit, wherever that may be.