Cellar Doors and Dinosaurs

Cellar Doors and Dinosaurs
Barossa Valley, Australia

Barossa Valley, Australia

No visit to South Australia is complete without a trip to the Barossa Valley. One of the most renowned wine regions in the world and the home to some pretty well known vineyards such as Penfold’s and Jacobs Creek.

Whilst many people visit the Barossa as a day tour from Adelaide as it is so close, with time on our hands and our trusty Heidi the Hire car to move us, we found a Groupon deal for a 3 night stay at a nice little motel with a free bottle of wine, deal done.

Our first stop on the outskirts of the Barossa valley was a tourist attraction known as the Whispering Wall. It is actually the retaining wall of the Barossa Reservoir and is not much to look at. This 100meter long curved wall is something of an accidental engineering stroke of genius. If you each stand at one end of the wall, the sound travels along the wall and you can have a full blown conversation with the person that you barely see. No need to shout, you can hear as clear if they are stood next you. This was absolutely the most exciting place ever. It was pretty funny to see the reactions of grown adults jumping with excitement at the wonder that was the Whispering Wall.

After a relaxed evening drinking our free wine and feasting on our picnic dinner (I did miss having La Toya to cook in as a cheap dinner option) we had an early night ready for our first day exploring.

Amazingly our friends Lin and Geoff who we first met in Tassie and had caught up with a few times along the way were also in the Barossa just a short drive from us. Lin and Geoff had been on the road for much the same amount of time as us. They were having a house built in Queensland and decided to take to the road to explore the country and after the Barossa they were headed up through the middle and up to Darwin before heading back around to Queensland to move into their new home that we had named ‘Utopia’ as it sounded amazing. This would be the last time we would see them on this trip so what better way to say goodbye than with a bit of wine tasting at a rather posh and lovely cellar door. With our goodbyes done and a warning that we would definitely be turning up at Utopia in the future we set off and found a happy diversion along the way. Mini Golf.

Believe it or not, we were the only people at the mini golf. Seriously people what’s wrong with you? Dinosaur mini golf in the Barossa valley is magic. Usually I am pretty good at mini golf, a misspent youth holidaying in Somerset left me like a PGA Mini Golf champion, but I think the wine may have gotten the better of me as for the first time ever Tim beat me, gutted.

The following day it was time to hit the cellar doors, for poor Tim the driver this was not so much fun, but for me it was amazing. You know that you are at the classy vineyards when there are no charges for the wine tasting and they are actively encouraging you to start with the whites and work your way through the reds.

It was pretty cool seeing the real Jacobs Creek, literally a tiny stream under a bridge. However the vineyards were beautiful and the visitor centre was stunning with bean bags on the lawn over-looking the valley filled with vines. There were so many wines to taste not even I could manage them all but I did work my way through the new range of wines which were a special edition because the grapes were harvested at night. I can’t say I could taste the difference, but they were delicious and we had no option than to buy a bottle of the Rose for later! We hoped to do a tour of Jacob’s Creek but sadly they had changed the times and we missed it :o( But hey ho, onwards to Penfolds.

Penfolds was a pretty swish cellar door, with some pretty expensive reds to taste. We did a great act of trying them all looking like we were really going to buy some before making a dash for it when some new people arrived and needed a space at the bar.

We had one more task to complete in the Barossa Valley, we needed to head to a hand-made toy shop to get a picture with the Giant Rocking Horse for our Big Things collection. What we didn’t realise that this was actually in the Adelaide Hills and we pretty much ended up back in Adelaide, but it didn’t matter Heidi enjoyed the drive.

With my mums birthday looming I needed to make her a personalised birthday card and figured the big rocking horse would be perfect. He was pretty cool, we posed on the little horse with the big one behind us and paid our fee to climb to the top of him. I didn’t think much of this and trotted on up, however the little metal ladders were as steep as they could possibly make them and in flip flops I genuinely felt like I was taking my life into my own hands. It was only from the top that I think I really appreciated how big the big rocking horse was. Going down was even more awful than going up, I never realised it but I am pretty sure I have a bit of a fear of ladders!

As we were there it seemed only appropriate that we have a look around the toy shop, which was pretty cool. It was all proper old fashioned wooden toys like I had as a kid. Through the shop we could see signs to a little wildlife park and for the price of a bag of food you could go in and see the wallabies and lamas. The woman did warn us that there was a pretty feisty lama who would try and steal the food. I took it in my stride and within seconds of being in the enclosure and trying to feed a cute little wallaby I was being chased by said feisty lama. Needless to say I threw the food in the opposite direction and got out of there. I just managed to muster up enough courage to nip back in to see my wallaby to get him to wish my mum a happy birthday!

The Barossa valley was absolutely beautiful, the sun shone on us, we drank wine, ate cream teas and lived the high life. I could get used to this.

Sadly it was time to hit the road again, back to Adelaide for cat sitting duties…..