Lah de Dah

Jo Hardy (see Jo Hardy's African Adventure link on the right of this page) has something in common with us in that she has left Shawbrook Road to live in a far flung corner of the globe, and is writing a blog about it. She has fantastic tales of building schools and improving communities' self sufficiency in Zambia.

I'm afraid all I have to tell you is about how we went touring wineries in the Barossa Valley. It's Australia's most famous wine region, about an hour and half drive out of Adelaide. It's the home of Jacob's Creek (that's actually a place, as well as a brand), Wolf Bass and Penfolds, along with a few hundred others. There's also a pretty good German pie shop in Tanunda, if you get hungry.

The region is spectacularly beautiful, and worth driving around even if the wineries weren't there. But there they are, and most of them have a cellar door where you can taste their wares, usually for free, and usually along with a minibus load of women on Hen weekends in matching T-shirts (I could swear I saw the Rotund Pink Ladies from my City to Bay Run). This will help inform your decision as to what to buy next time you are in Thirsty Camel, Liquor Land, Booze Brothers or whatever other Bottlo you end up in. Don't buy them at the cellar door, because they'll be $5 extra.

Ben and Sarah from church took us in their big car, with the boys happily tucked away in the back watching DVDs. Sharon and Sarah would do the tasting, mostly of port, whilst the rest of us explored the grounds of wherever we were. Most of the ones we visited had beautiful grounds with Barbecues and picnic areas. There are fields full of purple wildflowers at the moment, and these next to row after row of vines was amazing to see. Seppeltsfields was particularly impressive, with avenues lined with 2000 palm trees. We also had a brief visit to the Whispering Wall, which really is impressive when you stand 100m away at the other end and can still hear Robert whispering, "Dad smells of trumps". Civil engineers may be interested to know that it was the first concrete arc dam, built in 1901. Or something.

I'm no connoisseur of wine, and would rather go on pub crawl for beer, but I can see how you'd easily get into it, and Sharon and Sarah certainly had a good go at improving their knowledge of fortified wines. This was because Sarah had bought a barrell in which to age her port, and was trying to decide who's 15 litres to buy.

Anyway, we didn't buy anything (except pies) and so, whilst Jo can share heroic tales of Majority World development, all we contributed to this already rich area was fuel emmisions and a pile of pine cones at Seppeltsfields winery from playing throwing them at a tree.

Now we've been, we can add the Barossa to our list of places to take people when they visit.

For truly impressive stories, see Jo's Blog.