Lyndoch Hill -- and 30,000 roses

Two hours' drive north of Adelaide is one of the great joys of this part of the country, a rose garden opened officially by the Queen in 2002. For rose lovers -- like Dave and myself -- it's a treat that money couldn't actually buy, yet it's free for the strolling through! Imagine 22 hectares of walking paths through garden-like woodland, planted in with 30,000 roses bushes and trees; and at any one time, around twenty percent of them will be in full bloom...

The rose garden is associated with Barossa Chateau Estate, which offers a cellar door, massive gift store, and restaurant. Lyndoch Hill also offers motel-style accommodation. Staying there would be another treat: imagine waking up on the skirts of 22 hectares of roses!

The garden is about three minutes up the road from the town of Lyndoch, which was settled c. 1840 by German immigrants, after having been surveyed and named by Colonel William Light, who pitched camp in the area where Burge Family Estates now stands. The town is still quite small, with under 2,000 residents; but you'll find German-style pubs, bakeries, cafes and stores ... not to mention the surrounding vineyards, most of which offer cellar doors, wine tasting, and some of the best wines in the country ... uh, the world.

But, wines and fine food apart, it really is the roses that one goes to Lyndoch Hill for ... at least if you love them, as we do. If you've ever browsed through a gardening catalog and seen these plants advertised, you'll know some of the exotic names of the blooms. Many are not the kind you could expect to see in suburban gardens, but you'll see them all here --

Dozens of paths twist this way and that, not quite randomly, giving the impression that the gardens are, in fact, much larger than 22 hectares. You could walk for hours -- and will, if you want to see everything. Statuary, benches, pergolas, hide away in unexpected nooks; oriental-style bridges span tiny watercourses which are dry most of the year ... parrots, whistlers, fairy wrens and a myriad native birds thrive in the woodland while vineyards stretch away beyond the periphery of the gardens, like vast green lakes. But it's all about the roses, really. So here we go:

Barossa Valley and due north ... Clare Valley sunset

Vineyards. Well, what do you  expect to see in the Barossa Valley -- outside the winery, that is!

Tolkien coined the phrase: "The road goes ever on and on." And boy, does it.

Cellar Doors almost permanently open for tasting and sales ... every hundred yards or so.

A glimpse of the industrial side of the wine business: Very Large Tanks. Of wine. Mmmm.

The vines are changing color with the season ... winter is close at hand.

Surprise! Gorgeous roses at the Jacob's Creek arch ... Welcome to Tanunda.

And these are the vineyards belonging to Jacob's Creek, not far from those roses...

Heading north for Kapunda. It's HOT. Ice cream, anyone? Please?!

Main street, Kapunda, in sizzling heat and UV...

...and a first hint that this was copper mining country too: The Copper Mine Hotel, Kapunda.

The Sir Sidney Kidman memorial garden in Kapunda ... we just happened to park beside it...

...detail of some of the wall art you see in the shot above. The bust of Sir Sidney Kidman
is just out of the frame, at right of this image.

And the north road out of town --

Follow the signs: the Clare Valley isn't so far away now! But first ... 

beyond Tarlee, Lola decides to take a breather while Jade photographs the
fall colors at the roadside. This is either Rhynie or Auburn, can't remember which.

If anyone knows what kind of trees these are, please tell us -- we'd like a garden full.

Back on the road, headed ever north, and the landscape has changed.
This is typical of the mid-north region of South Australia...

It's well worth mentioning that the road system is fantastic -- and they keep those
roads in very good condition. The only poor roads we traveled were over on
York Peninsula, a couple of days later. You'll see those soon.

When the land won't support vineyards, the local crop is hay... stock feed.

...and you can see, the crops were just in as we rocketed through the region.

You can actually do the drive in two hours, from downtown Adelaide to the Clare Valley,
but we took over five hours, deliberately dawdling.

The sign in the Clare Valley Visitors' Centre says it all...

Made it! This would be our Base Camp for the next three nights --

The Clare Valey Motel, in sunset light. Dave was in the pool at this point, as Jade
took a few shots in the soft, pink evening light.

Now, this looks interesting ... armchairs. Bed. Pillows. Dinner first, please!

You can actually do the drive from downtown Adelaide to the Clare Valley in two hours, and stay inside the state speed limit, too. We took about five and a half hours, starting with breakfast in Aldgate and a long stop to check out the Whispering Wall on the Barossa Dam. We'd have taken twice as long, if we'd stopped in the Barossa Valley! Well, we did stop in Kapunda for ice cream (Golden North's lime for Jade, and chocolate for Dave), but we've already "done" the Barossa wine tour thing -- we'll share that trip in pictures soon -- so on Wednesday we were really blowing through at high speed, headed for Clare.

In fact, the vast majority of these images, today, were shot through the windscreen or side windows of a car traveling at about 110kph. They're good images, due to the intense brightness of the daylight, which gave shutter speeds fast enough to "stop" the countryside flying by, and apertures tiny enough to give sharp images. The camera is "just" a Fuji FinePix HS10, if you're interested (which is to say one of the biggest of the compacts, but not a digital SLR). The HS30 is the current model, and Jade is seriously thinking of upgrading. (Actually, Dave is more likely to buy it, to stop her grumbling ... seriously, guys: for every great picture you get, you lose another one because the camera cycles soooo slowly. Also, this specific HS10 is starting to develop a couple of problems which might have something to do with the chip. And the closer we got the the Very Haunted House we mentioned in the first of the Clare Valley 2013 Trip posts, the worse it got ... more about that soon. And read the post in daylight. With company. Not kidding.)

So we shot through the Barossa with just a couple of stops: Kapunda, and ... well, the autumn colors on the roadside were either captured in Rhynie or Auburn, and we can't remember which. Auburn is so similar to other tiny towns on this route, it's indistinguishable. The thing that sets it apart is its beautiful name -- bet your bottom dollar it was settled by folks from Scotland, with a name like that!

Kapunda was a copper mining town -- the site of "Bagot's Fortune," which speaks for itself. The state's first English language country newspaper was founded there, too. It's a tremendously interesting town, worthy of much more time than we spent there. That day was too hot, too bright, too sizzling with UV, for us to do the "Kapunda Heritage Trail walk," but we'd like to spend an afternoon there ... in winter, when there's a blade or two of of green grass to be seen, and you can stick your nose outside without it being burned. Fortunately, they have a really nice webpage.

Just about level with Kapunda, going east-west, and speaking geographically, is Eudunda ... which Jade had wanted very much to visit, and was a bit disappointed to miss due to running out of time. Eudunda was the town where writer Colin Thiele grew up, and which he used as the location in Sun on the Stubble. That's always been a favorite novel ... it's about 50 years old now, and still a good read, and a great laugh, on a par with movies like The Sundowners and The Picture Show Man. One of the roadsigns featured above shows the "Thiele Highway," named for the writer. Maybe next trip north...

Out of Kapunda, headed "due up," the landscape changes fast. It grows more arid, flatter, and much more empty. You leave the vineyards behind for a long while, and the local crop becomes hay. You'd have to say it's not wheat or barley in this area, because you don't see any of the grain silos that punctuate the countryside in the grain growing regions. You'll see those very soon -- we got great pictures as we headed north and east out of the Clare Valley, bound for places like Adrossan and Balaklava and Walleroo.

But as we reached the southern end of the Clare Valley (Auburn, in fact), we were thinking mostly about cool drinks, armchairs, a dip in the pool, and dinner. The Clare Valley Motel was a most welcome sight. We'd booked ahead, and were very pleased indeed with both the quality and the service. Pretty rooms with good a/c, room service if you wanted it, a charming restaurant with great food, a pool table in the convention facility upstairs, where Dave had a great time knocking balls around after dinner,under the watchful gaze of a huntsman the size of the palm of your hand. Eep! (See the critter too, soon ... shows you how dangerous they really are.)

The next day, Thursday, would take us to a couple of the best wineries in the region, and a glorious post-Colonial era church, and then on to Burra ... but we're going to split that day over a couple of posts, because there's so much to show. Tomorrow: Seven Hills and St. Aloysius and "the Madonna of the Vines."

Breakfast in Aldgate ... Colonial history in Birdwood ... welcome swallows on the Whispering Wall

Aldgate ... first stop, breakfast! Fall colors tell you this is April in South Australia.

On the Onkaparinga Scenic Drive ... Dave takes a second to upload a pic to facebook.
Next stop: Birdwood... 

Colonial architecture and autumn colors in Birdwood, South Australia...

...a town which was originally known as Blumberg.

Jacarandas changing to gold. Winter's around the corner.

The mill on Birdwood's main drag.

A little history of the tanbark mill...

Bright, sizzling sunshine. It's hot! Anyone for ice cream?

Heading out of Birdwood; next stop: Barossa Valley, and here's a vineyard already.
Actually, vines are grown in many, many regions in this state.

Next stop: the Whispering Wall on the Barossa Dam.

It's hot. That is -- H-O-T. Where did we put the hats?

The Barossa Dam ... a serious piece of engineering...

...good, high water levels on the Barossa Reservoir...

...and Welcome Swallows by the scores!

The Welcome Swallow is a tiny bird, about the size of your thumb;
they're common in almost all parts of Australia

Dave hiked the whole way across, so we could test out the whispering thing --
and they're right. Whisper on one side, and you hear perfectly on the other. 

Lola, being a sensible Mitsubishi Magna, says it's way too hot here.
Time to get out of Dodge.

A gentle reminder to the legions of international tourists visiting here:
drive on the left side in Australia. Yes, we're weird.

Next stop, the Barossa Valley. In fact -- that's the gateway to Lyndoch Hill on the left!

Wednesday: the Adelaide weather forecast was for 30 degrees, shade temperature, blue skies, light breezes. The plan: leave via Handorf and grab breakfast in Birdwood. Best laid plans usually get changed, and ours did. Roadworks rerouted us a couple of times, and by 9:15 we were hungry enough to say, "nuts, let's stop in Aldgate for brekkie, and then we can dawdle to Birdwood."

Fall colors in the area are gorgeous. We parked off one side of the main street, where the town has done fantastic things with the long, linear parking lot (carpark, if you prefer)  serving the train station. It's become a lovely garden -- and right opposite is the Aldgate Providore and Cafe. [Update: in 2016 the name changed to "The Fred Eatery" and the menu has changed. Still good, but different.]

The food was great, and the decor and theme is "Mexican cantina." So neat -- and the menu looks terrific. We do like Mexican, and we're promising ourselves at least one lunch there, very soon. Breakfast as we headed out on Wednesday? Jade had the free range eggs, Nairne bacon (98% lean) and baked tomato. Talk about healthy. Dave had the breakfast bruschetta with poached eggs, avocado, tomato, and fresh coriander (cilantro, if you prefer). Healthy, again. Great coffee, too. The staff are renovating at this time, and will be open for dinner again soon, but right now they're serving brekkie and lunch.

Suitably refueled, it was time to head for Birdwood, a town that was once known as Blumberg. See the plaque, above, for a potted history. World War I changed many things -- the face of the Australian map, for instance. Birdwood's gratest claim to fame is arguably the National Motor Musuem, which, weirdly, doesn't have its own website, but you can find a bit about it here. This time around, we didn't go into the museum -- just photographed the outside (see the photo we uploaded yesterday) -- because we did the whole thing in enormous detail only a couple of years ago. We'll show you the inside in some dedicated posts, as we go along.

We took in a bit of Colonial history, but the UV must have been sky-high. It was hot in the sun; you hugged any shade you could find and reminded yourself, it'll be winter in seven weeks. Climate change?

Heading out of "Old Blumberg," headed for the Barossa Valley, it's not long before you start to see vineyards. If fact, enormous areas of South Australia are suitable for, and devoted to, vineyarding. There are several clearly distinct wine regions: Clare Valley, Barossa Valley, McClaren Vale, Langhorn and Coonawarra are the main ones; there's also a few new ones, or minor ones, where people are trying new varieties and experiments, as the climate changes. McClaren Vale is our local wine area. From where we live right now, you can be in the Vale in about ten minutes flat. And of course, we have a bias ... to us, the McClaren Vale wines are the best. (In fact ... they actually are! We've tasted Barossa, Clare Valley and Langhorn, and the local wines are just better.)

Next stop: the Whispering Wall, on the Barossa Dam. Why? Because we've never done this before. We came close a few years ago, working our way back from the Barossa, not long before Christmas, 2008. The problem that day was, the gates were locked, the place was closed to public access on account of the Total Fire Ban ... unsurprising, because the heat was ferocious. Seems management doesn't want to take responsibility for tourists and travelers in that heat, and with the very real risk of big, big fires. (SA has been lucky lately; we haven't had a really big one in years. Which means we're overdue for one. Dang.)

The Whispering Wall is fantastic: two people stand on opposite sides of the wall and whisper, and the sound carries so perfectly, you can even hear the other person breathing! It's better than a cell phone. Amazing. Dave took the hike across the whole dam head ... Jade stopped in the middle to photograph the swallows, which flock around the dam by the scores. They're Welcome Swallows, tiny, beautiful birds about the size of your thumb ... iridescent in the sunlight. They're common in most parts of Australia ... and from what we've seen, they must eat their weight in insects every day. Thank heavens we have them!

It was a bit after noon by this time, and Lola (being a perfectly sensible Mitsubishi Magna) was clearly heard to say that it was way too hot in this neck of the woods, and it was time to get out of this part of Dodge. We listened attentively, and were aboard when she headed out ... past a sign reminding international travelers to (!) "Drive on the left in Australia." No, really? Hmm. Wonder if that has anything to do with the fact the steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car down here? LOL ... yes, we're weird. We don't deny it.

So we were headed for the Barossa Valley in the early afternoon ... driving north into hot, dry, dusty country where the vineyards are a welcome splash of green. Actually, late in autumn (fall, if you like), they're changing to copper and gold, and very pretty).

Come back tomorrow to see a bit of the Barossa: Ice cream in Kapunda, onward and northward to the fantastic motel we called Base for three nights, and a lot more.