Having not been able to get to sleep last night until a ridiculous time this morning, when I got up I was feeling very tired. I had a shower to wake myself up, got dressed, then sat down with Tricia and we had a cup of tea. We chatted about what things we might do today and coordinated a plan of sorts.
Our first port of call was to find the HQ of Girl Guides South Australia. It was tucked away in a little suburb, down a residential street, but we managed to find it. It was a very pretty building, quite old; it looked like it used to be a house. Inside I spoke to a lady at the desk who gave me some information about the special Centenary event going ahead on Saturday – I had heard about it in Melbourne and so was keen to find out the details; she gave me the phone number of the lady organising it, Michelle. Whilst I was there, I picked up a couple of bits in the shop and then Tricia and I left to head off to our next adventure.
Tricia drove me to the Barossa region (apparently this is a very famous wine region which I had never heard of, but that figures!), where we went to some wineries. The first one was at Yalumba Winery, housed in a beautiful, massive, old mansion with some lovely old statues in the garden. This was quite a nerve-wracking experience for me, being entirely wine-ignorant (I really needed Sarah there, no longer will I mock her for doing ‘Wine Appreciation’ at uni!). The lady explained some of the basics about there being different types of grapes, which give us the name of the wine (Chardonnay, Shiraz etc), she told me lots of other stuff which seemed very interesting but it went in one ear and out the other (I tend to very quickly shed information I don’t need to retain – now, had she been talking about beer, it would’ve been a different story!). I tried quite a few different white wines, I rather liked two of them quite a lot and even appreciated the difference between two of the same wines from two different years. Oh, and I even correctly identified the flavour of ‘capsicum’ in one of the wines – lucky guess! I think it was the Riesling that I liked and something about a Chardonnay Pinot, or something like that, who knows?!
Next we went to Ross Winery, it was a bit of a boring building from the outside but had a lovely roaring fire inside. Again, I showed myself up to be completely clueless about wine, but this time the lady didn’t tell me anything about it, she just kept giving me different ones to try. I didn’t really like any of them, so this time I ended up only having a few sips of each one and then tipping the rest away into the big bucket thing. Tricia liked a couple that she tried and bought a couple of bottles of a Semillion (I think that was what it was called), which I thought was rank.
Our third stop was to somewhere I had actually heard of, so instantly that meant I had something to associate it with, thus it was already more interesting - the Jacob’s Creek winery. I guess because it is a well known brand, they have made the visitor centre a bit more interesting, with a few displays on the story of Jacob’s Creek. We tried a few wines, which were actually quite nice, but I was loathed to have too much as I had already had quite a few, albeit in small quantities, but of different types, so I took it easy! Tricia and I decided to have lunch here, so settled down with a lovely view over the vineyards, although there were a lot of ominous looking clouds in the sky. We enjoyed a delicious tasting platter, with all sorts of different nibbles. Very tasty indeed.
Following Jacobs Creek, we decided to go to one last winery – Turkey Flats Winery. They hardly had any white wine, therefore we didn’t stay long and we only got to try one and it was underwhelming. From there we went to a view point where you should be able to see all across the Barossa valley, but because of the overcast weather, the view wasn’t that amazing, although I could appreciate how good it would be on a clear day.
On the way home, we came to the highlight of my day - the Big Rocking Horse, in Gumericha. It is out the front of a factory that makes wooden toys. We went for a wander about and saw all the different things they made. I was excited to have seen another ‘Big’ thing – I haven’t seen one for some time, although I was quite disappointed that the Big Rocking Horse didn’t actually rock, but I guess it might make it a little unsafe!
When we got home, I went for a walk to the local supermarket, just to stretch my legs and have a coffee. Back at the house, Tricia and I had dinner, beef stew and rice, then settled down with the tv, watching Masterchef and some crime show. It rained all night, like properly heavy rain; rain, rain, rain. Sam eventually arrived home from his business trip to Canberra, he had his dinner and we sat together watching tv, before I headed to my caravan and turned in, still feeling very homesick for Melbourne.
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