Saturday, April 30th to Wednesday, May 4th, 2011
After returning to Adelaide from Kangaroo Island, I had a few more days to spend in the area. Partially because there were a couple things I wanted to see, and partially because finding transport back to Darwin was far more difficult than I expected and I found a cheaper day to fly. (Seriously the bus ride from Adelaide to Darwin via Alice Springs........$700).
Of course when I arrived home on Friday night, I spent the evening watching the Royal Wedding. Yes I watched the replays several times and I also woke Mom up at 430am to see if she was watching it. She wasn't. Apparently she was going to watch it on replays. I enjoyed it live......and then on several replays. Such a wonderful occasion.
Saturday I got up......not overly early (and watched some more wedding highlights) before heading over to the Museum of South Australia. Free to visit, you know I will always find something interesting in a local museum. It really is a good way to get a brief overview of the history of the area as well as many other places, and always from a slightly different point of view. Here are a few things I found.
A few of the masks and other items from Papau New Guinea. Not a lot of information as to what these are but I am pretty sure they are memorial effigy. Replicas of the face would be made and kept was a memorial.
Look rocks. Like most museums this one has a great natural history section. Turns out I still remember NOTHING from those geology courses I took in University. It's a good thing I make good money as a nurse or it might really bother me that I spent all that money on useless courses. In case you can't read the wall these are minerals from the Broken Hill Region of New South Wales.
Always an Egypt section. Still doesn't seem right to see a mummy out side Egypt but I guess not everyone is fortunate enough to visit the country itself but they still deserve to see some artifacts.
And of course some fossil remains. This is the Diprotodon. According to Wikipedia (my favourite source of possibly correct information) it was also known as the Giant Wombat or the Rhinoceros Wombat. It is said to be the largest marsupial that ever lived.
One of the pieces of equipment that Sir Douglas Mawson would have used while exploring the Flinders Ranges (located in South Australia). Mawson was the first person to really explore the Ranges. He also seemed to like radioactive minerals.
A few of the little marsupials in South Australia. Well maybe I should be more specific. In this picture you can see the Tasmanian Pedamelon (who are extinct in SA), the burrowing bettong (who have been reintroduced in SA) and the eastern-hare wallaby (who also happen to be extinct).
A couple of armlets used by Australian aboriginals. These one have come from Bathurst Island off the Northern Territory coast.
These are shaped like shields but they are in fact canvases for artists to paint or carve their individual Dreaming. The shapes are dependent on the region that each aboriginal artist comes from.
This painting was completed by 29 artists. It represents 4 main Dreamings of Yanardilyi. It is also a political statement about their land that graziers occupied in the 1930's.
This is a model of a New Guinea dwelling.
This piece is a lot more than it first appears.It is depicted as Emu Dreaming. This is a map of the country around Watarru. Aboriginals called different regions of the Australia "countries" and they had rules about how they moved from country to country. You can imagine that when Europeans arrived and claimed land and put up fences how difficult this was for aboriginals in the area.
Anyway, a good little place to check out if you find yourself in the city with a few spare minutes. Later that night I headed out to catch one more AFL game. Once I returned to Darwin the only AFL I would get to watch is on TV and since Scott, Deb and I don't own a TV it would be a little difficult to watch.
Finally.....a stadium that understands the concept of putting a lid on your beer so you don't spill it while walking to your seat.
My seats were pretty good. I couldn't complain with the view. The game was between the Adelaide Crows and the St. Kilda Saints.
A Saints player kicking the ball. Pretty sure he scored a goal on this attempt.
A few of the players. St. Kilda is in the red, black and white and Adelaide is in the other very colourful uniform.
A happy Crows player after the game. He's walking over to give this ball to a fan. The Crows won 90 to 71 so the crowd was also very happy.
I think I did nothing on Sunday because I didn't take any pcitures. I probably slept and shopped and continued to watch Royal Wedding highlights.....I just loved the Royal Wedding.
Monday however I had a busy day planned. I hooked myself back up with Groovy Grape (the tour company I went to Kangaroo Island with) and traveled along on a wine tour of the Barossa Valley. Barossa is one of Australia's most famous wine regions but this tour was fun because it stopped at a few other places too.
This is the giant rocking horse that you can find at The Toy Factory. The horse is said to be the world's biggest rocking horse and this factory is Australia's only remaining wooden toy factory.
This was our second stop, the Barossa Dam. It was built between 1899 and 1933 to provide water to the area. It is said to be the largest arched dam at about 150 meters (492 feet). We stopped here not because it is a dam but because of an interesting property this wall has. Called the Whispering Wall, a person can stand on one end of the dam, and speaking in a normal voice, have a conversation with someone standing at the other end of the dam, like they were standing next to each other. It really is neat the way the sound travels along the wall.
Another look at that dam and the Whispering Wall. So neat.
From there we headed to our first winery, which happened to be Jacobs Creek. That name should sound familiar to pretty much everyone as you can buy Jacobs Creek wine pretty much everywhere in the world.
A very pretty spot was Jacobs Creek. Not a small winery at all and they make a lot of money.
We also stopped at Kies Winery, Richmond Grove winery and Seppeltsfield Winery. All very good. And somewhere in there we had some lunch. A carefully chosen menu of chicken, kangaroo and koala sausage. Just kidding, they always try to convince tourists that we're eating koala.
The crushing pit at Kies Winery.
Some of the barrels at Richmond Grove. They are made of French or US oak. They cost around $1,600 a barrel.
Nothing like palm trees and wineries. What a beautiful day to do some wine tasting.
This was at Seppeltsfield Winery. They actually make a lot of Port wine. This Port happens to be 100 years old. They are very well organized there and will be able to put out a 100 year old port every year for the next little while.
After the wine tour I did nothing but pack my bag. Tuesday, I headed back to Darwin...... but it wasn't easy. It ended up taking me about 17 hours to get there (Yes I know, I could have gotten back to Canada in that amount of time). I had to travel through Melbourne. My flight was scheduled to leave Melbourne at 2am but it turns out that Virgin Blue had trouble "locating" the pilot. Eventually my flight was cancelled and rescheduled for 7am (an hour after I was scheduled to arrive in Darwin). We all feel that pilot may have had a few drinks and was in no condition to fly. I just wish I had known that it was going to be cancelled because then I would have gotten a hotel for the night. The airport was not comfortable at all. On a positive note I did get a free flight out of it to use at a later time.......only problem is it means I have to fly Virgin Blue again. I seriously have had no luck with airlines in Australia.
Eventually I made it back to Darwin and my vacation officially ended. It was a great 2 months and I managed to see so much of the country. I still have Western Australia to see but that will have to wait for another day.
Julie
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