Fleurieu 2011: Stormy weather over South Australia's Lakes District

Tookayerta Creek is brimming after the rain -- and with a stormy night still ahead --

Yes, there really is a Tookayerta Creek -- you couldn't make this stuff up! We're in the region
of Finniss now: flat lands, the Lakes District --

How flat is the Finniss region? Very. This shot has been doctored to get the most out of it.
In Photoshop, I split it, sky from land; enhanced both, and then put them back together.
Great result -- look at that sky! In fact, the day was almost like twilight...

As the saying goes, "great weather for ducks" -- or, in this case, for black swans. These guys
are in their natural environment, in a flooded area --

-- right off the side of the road! About ten minutes away from Milang, we pulled over to photograph this...

-- while, on the other (higher) side of the road, cattle scoped us out: "What in the world
are the weird pink monkeys doing now?" Heading for Milang, before the weather hits, guys!

A lone pelican cruises Lake Alexandrina...

... the sail boats are battened down, ready to take whatever comes.

Stormy weather over Lake Alexandrina is dramatic, picturesque --

This isn't twilight by a long shot; it just looks that way!

The old jetty at Milang, looking far more like art than photography. In fact --

-- the whole vast landscape of sky and water was extraordinary reminiscent of some of the work of the late
Dutch artist, Rien Poortvliet ... The Living Forest, Journey to the Ice Age, and Dogs. Google-Image this! Go on!

A couple (not Dave and Jade) takes a last stroll on the shore of Lake Alexandrina, before the weather "arrives."

Next morning, Dave and Jade strolled in the opposite direction -- the wetlands.

The mollusk population certainly approved of the wet weather. Several million of these guys were out to play

The Milang wetlands were strangely silent -- nothing to be heard from any direction...

...oddly enough, no birds, no other hikers, just Dave and Jade. Oh yes, and at least million mollusks!

Checkout time came around to the accompaniment of screeches of an arriving flock of parrots --
they often roost in the vineyards just over at Langhorne...

Little corellas are among the loudest birds in the world, and they travel in mobs of up to a hundred. 

A broad-scale irrigation system at Langhorne ... somewhat redundant in this weather. 

The Langhorne region is not as well known as the Barossa, McLaren Vale or the Coonawarra, but it boasts
some marvelous wineries; and its wines are unique ... rich, piquant, potent.

Wine tanks at Bleasdale Wines. It's imposible to think that Adelaide is only an hour away...

The vineyards here are incredibly lush, producing the best shiraz wines in existence. These vineyards
depend on yearly flooding for irrigation...

The history of the Langhorne region dates back to 1850 ... and this wagon was probably in use the day
the first vines were planted.

Wine barrels at Bleasdale Wines ...

-- and the original red gum lever press used at Bleasdale for 70 years. 'Huge' is an understatement. 

Cellar door sales at Bleasdale. You'e spoiled for choice, but -- their sparkling shiraz is heaven in a bottle.

Leaving Langhorne Creek ... where to now?

If rain wasn't enough -- fog came down as we headed north, on our way home...

Driving conditions were fun through the hills, where hairpin bends and sudden steep valleys
appear right ahead of you. Dave had  a whale of a time -- he loves this stuff...

Closer to Mylor, the fog began to clear and the rain returned...

The sheer amount of moss on the trees at Mylor Oval (ie., cricket field), where we stopped for lunch
before heading on home, indicates that it can be pretty damp, pretty often, in this neck of the woods...

Hahndorf, in the rain ... everyone driving on headlights. We didn't even bother stopping ...
time to get home, get warm and dry, and check out the pictures.

Beyond Hahndorf, though, we just had to stop and photograph this: looks like a rain forest ... primordial ... hushed,
still, air heavy with the scent of eucalypt and the calls of distant parrots.

This image, and the next, illustrate the fact that the camera does lie. You'd swear we'd found a herd of deer
in a clearing in the woods. Alas, it's a venison farm off the roadside --

-- these photos were captured shooting carefully between the links of a very tall cyclone fence.
Twenty minutes later, we were home and unpacking.

Rain, rain and more rain was the way it went for us in 2011 -- but sometimes you can get fantastic photos in conditions that would give the average travel agent the heebie-jeebies. They'll never sell a vacation package to the Lakes District on the strength of flooded lowlands, brooding skies, black swans on the roadside and so forth ... but if you happened to find yourself there at the time, it was refreshingly different.

In the morning we hiked into the wetlands, hoping to see birds and instead encountering mollusks by the millions. By ten o'clock, a flock of little corellas arrived from across at Langhorne, and ... well, loud is an understatement. Great mobs of these birds haunt the vineyards; in February, when the crop is ready for picking, the vineyard staff will routinely fire off something like a small cannon, to scare them off. The gunshot doesn't injure the birds, but it does send them whirling over Milang in great shrieking clouds. The vineyard caretakers can apparently also fire off the cannon at 2:00am (which makes little sense, because the birds aren't nocturnal), which can create havoc over Milang in the wee small hours.

The drive back to Adelaide was an adventure in fog -- Dave had loads of fun, since he loves a challenge. The Adelaide Hills are rolling and can be precipitous, not very unlike his native Fairbanks hills, so he felt right at home piloting the car around hairpin bends where the world seemed to fall out from under you, right ahead...

And then were were home, unpacking, and sorting pictures: that's it for another trip!

Meningie - Wellington - Strathalbyn again ... almost home

With the weather changing, it was time to leave the mesmerizing world of the Coorong, headed --

-- into the dairy country around Meningie, where ... ye gods! The UFOs have landed! No, it's just water tanks,
crowned with quite an array of microwave relay aerials. 

Hang a right: we'll be circumnavigating Lake Alexandrina on the way home...

"No Diving," says the sign ... while diving would be a pretty neat trick off Meningie's old jetty -- which ended
long before it reached any water, in 2009! This is Lake Albert, which connects with Lake Alexandrina" We're used to
seeing the lakes from the Milang Side, of course.

Meningie is a popular destination in the region -- a much bigger town than Milang. But we prefer
the peace and quiet of the Milang area.

As you round the lake and approach the Wellington Ferry from the east side, one thing you can count on
is that the weather will be changeable. This shot, and the next, are actually borrowed from our 2011 trip to
Mount Gambier, but they illustrate this point so perfectly, why not borrow them?

Change in the weather (in 2011), waiting for the Wellington Ferry to come back across...

...and here's the exact same place in 2009. Get out of the car, stretch the legs while waiting for the ferry...

A long, long zoom shot of colonial ruins which stand abandoned not far from the river. The region is
full of history drowsing side by side with technology.

There goes the ferry on its way to Wellington. We just missed it. Ten minutes later --

Here it comes, headed for Tailem Bend. Time to get back in the car -- they don't take long to unload.

Halfway across, shooting out of the window -- and already hearing the ruckus! Like Strathalbyn, Wellington
is the home to huge flocks of little corellas ... and when they mill around, they shriek as only wild parrots can.

Little corellas are cousins to sulphur crested cockatoos -- both are common in South Australia.

Invasion of the little corellas! They were everywhere at Wellington on this trip in 2009.

...the trees are full of them, and every ten minutes they'll take off, swirl around in a great cloud,
shriek for the sheer fun of it, and then settle right back down again.

The road back to Stathalbyn takes you through miles and miles of agriculture.

And here we are back at Strathalbyn, where we began --

Ducks graze the parklands, while the Angas River bridge heads across to the bandstand and, beyond, the church.

Wall art ... actually, it's the public rest room beside the park, and -- never miss the chance to
decorate a wall, right?

Detail from the wall art at Strathalbyn ...

-- the work is astonishing, and so beautiful --

-- an unexpected pleasure in the evening light, just before we headed for home.

Evening light o the towers of St. Andrew's church. And now ... time to head home for dinner: we'll
be there in an hour or so.

From the Coorong through to Meningie, all you can do is put your foot down hard, let the Princess Highway zip past at the speed limit, because there's not much there (though it's not as desolate as the area between Milang and Lanhorne Creek, which might as easily be a location on Mars). As you get closer to Lake Albert, on the shore of which Meningie sits, the air becomes, um, shall we say "redolent with the aroma of agriculture." In other words, it's dairy country, with about a thousand times more cows out to pasture than there are people in the region ... your nose will certainly confirm this statistic!

 Meningie itself is a popular holiday spot for folks from far afield; it's quite a large, busy town, though we much prefer the depthless peace and quiet of the Milang-Clayton-Finiss region on the "home side" of Lake Alexandrina. In 2009 the water levels were low (too little rain -- which is becoming way too predictable in South Australia of late; troublingly predictable), and we could only chuckle at the sign stipulating "No Diving!" from a jetty that didn't get anywhere near the lake. Interestingly, "Meningie" is an Australian Aborigine word meaning "mud hole." One imagines the climate used to be a whole lot wetter in the past! (The map to left is a screencap from Google -- see it full sized, if you want to get a grasp on the geography -- it's quite readable.)

Then ... Wellington Ferry again, and the run through to Strathalbyn, where we stopped for a stretch of legs, snack and tea (or coffee, if you prefer; the picnic basket is always well stocked), before we headed home. Wellington had been invaded by little corellas in 2009, very likely the same flocks as gather in Strathalbyn too. They're great to watch, not so great to listen to, since they're LOUD!!

With evening light settling and dinner in mind, we headed straight for home ... which, on the above map, and at the time, was approximated by the "Marion" you see due south of Adelaide. (We've moved since then.)  And "it's a wrap!" That was it for another road trip. Now, where to next?!

• Dave covered this part of the trip with all due hilarity in "The Journey Home: Final Leg."