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:

Tropics in the Chill: The Sunderland Winter Gardens

Over many years I travelled from Australia to the UK to attend conferences at the University of Sunderland, and as a passionate photographer I recorded everywhere I went. There are a great many stories to be told from these journeys and I’m delighted to join Meander to the Max to have the chance to tell them, and to present some of the best of my images.

The first place I’d like to touch down is a very impressive attraction in the city of Sunderland. Sunderland, at the mouth of the River Wear on the northeast coast of Britain, is one of the old industrial cities, a major centre of shipbuilding in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, an exporter of coal and other products in the time of empire. I’ve heard it called a “cold, grey sort of city” and that’s true enough at the time of year I was visiting (the conference was always in November, within weeks of snow typically arriving) but I always found it a very friendly and welcoming place.

Stairs invite one into the green heights.

The town centre, characterised by the Wearmouth Bridge, features a number of old civic institutions, among them Sunderland Museum (Burdon Rd, Sunderland SR1 1PP, UK), behind which you find Mowbray Park and the University. But attached to the Museum is the Winter Gardens, an amazing glass domed conservatory in which tropical trees and plants thrive all year round in controlled conditions.

The Museum has occupied this site since 1879, and the original Winter Gardens were built at that time. They were badly damaged during the Second World War and subsequently demolished, with a new structure in the 1960s occupying the site. However, the present structure was built after lottery-based funding came available in 2001, and the tropical house has been recreated in a modern incarnation that is truly remarkable, both for its sheer size and the variety of tropical species contained.

You can forget you're inside a building!

The exterior view at the head of the article shows the life-size bronze walrus that dominates the banks of the ornamental pool that is thronged with birdlife, including the seagulls seen here.

I visited on my UK foray of 2011, taking in the Museum and Mowbray Park on the same day, but those are worth separate posts at some point. I recall the most impressive aspect being the sense of separation from the outside world – the chilly, grey north-eastern weather was abruptly denied by the humid warmth of the forest dome, and one could wander the elevated walkways among palm and vine, look down into a fish pond, and generally appreciate a feeling more like Australia than England.

Stainless steel and aluminium form a sterile touch of the outside world among a veritable jungle.

A very nice café can be found by the entry way, and I recall spending an easy half hour with hot chocolate, contemplating this bubble of the tropics. Not since prehistoric times have such species flourished in this part of the world, and the Victorian skill at glass construction – epitomised by the ill-fated Crystal Palace – brought the life and atmosphere of tropic climes to decidedly temperate latitudes.

For more information, see:

The Museum's Wikipedia entry

See It Do It Sunderland

Things to Do

The Museum's Facebook page

I look forward to further posts, so I hope you’ll meander with me as I explore England and look back on the sights and experiences of getting there and getting back.

Mike Adamson

Kong could appear from among those leaves!

You're a long way up!

It's a memorable view among the steamy airs.

The actual dome and the grey British sky.

Aldgate for a Spanish brunch, Mount Lofty lights up with fall colors, and the sun sets over Clayton Bay

First order of priority: breakfast! Aldgate Providore and Cafe in, uh, Aldgate.

The Aldgate Providore is a Spanish-themed cafe-restaurant with great food. Dave orders up a fine breakfast --

-- and spectacular coffee! Suitably refueled, we're off to --

-- catch the fall colors at Mount Lofty Botanic Garden on a cool, calm morning in late March.

March is the beginning of fall ... in Australia, of course. Oak trees know about this ... ripe acorns prove it.

Eurtopean and North American trees are glorious in this season.

The Mount Lofty Botanic Garden is 100% irrigated from storm water catchment. The lake at the heart of the park
is actually the catchment area, from which the water is pumped in all directions.

The park is situated high in the hills -- cooler even on very hot days. March can be astonishing hot,
but on this autumn day it was cool and nice.

The "bog garden" is a duck pond at the very lowest point of the park...

...and home to many plants that look utterly alien.

The view over the water catchment lake from the far side...

...where glory vines are changing color in honor of the season.

Only "imported" trees change color in the fall. There isn't a single Australian native that does it.

Follow the paths through and around some really beautiful old trees on yor way back to the parking lot (or
car park, if you want it in the native Aussie), and then you're on your way...

After checking into the Milang Lakes Motel by Lake Alexandrina, we went directly over to
Clayton Bay ... always wanted to photograph the sunset from there. Let's show you why...

Clayton Bay is an area as well as a town. Here's what Wikipedia says about it: "Clayton Bay is a small town on the River Murray in South Australia. The town is located opposite the north-east tip of Hindmarsh Island, 87 kilometres by road from Adelaide or 12 kilometres upriver from Goolwa." So there, now you know.

That's the marina in the middle of the shot. The town stretches off to your right.

Silver gulls are the most common seagulls you'll see in South Australia -- but far from the only ones.

You'll see silver gulls on every beach in the state, and along most of the rivers in any proximity to the sea.

Clayton Bay is home to a very active boatie community -- it has a busy marina (see the above picture).

The sun is almost down now. We sat on a bench on a bluff right above the water, waiting for the moment...

Digital cameras hate these lighting conditions. Shots captured on the automatic settings are
invariably poor. So -- switch to full manual right about now.

A flight of ducks heading back up to Lake Alexandrina for the evening, and...

Photography meets art! A rare, utterly perfect shot.

And here's why we've always wanted to photograph the sunset from Clayton Bay. Wow.

Taken at almost the same moment as the shot above -- this image doesn't use any of the camera's
filters or arty techniques. All "normal light" shots were done on full manual ...

...and the sun was gone in another minute. Next? Dinner, please!

Dave gets creative with a signboard beside the jetty. Wow -- what an effect!

We'd gone out for three days on this trip, so we had time to dawdle, no reason to hurry over anything. Only one thing was time sensitive: Monarto Wildlife Park, which closes its gates at about 4:00pm, so you need to get there early-ish. This was reserved for the second day of the excursion, so on the first day we could afford to meander... and we did!

On many of these trips we'll start out with breakfast in Aldgate. There's a couple of places we know there that are terrific for brunch. A favorite is the Aldgate Providore and Cafe, which is a Spanish-themed cafe-restaurant with very different, and very good, food ... and extremely good coffee.

From there, we circuited Mount Lofty a little way ... and in true meandering fashion, stopped again. The Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens is one of our favorite places, especially in fall. The park changes so much from season to season ... see it in this post, in all its summer green, in 2013. Caching the fall colors just right is not easy. Too early, and you see nothing; too late, and the trees will be stripped by a high wind.

March can be very hot in South Australia. In other years it's been over 100 degrees Fahrenheit on this date, but this year we were lucky. The weather was cool, a little overcast, with skies clearing as the day progressed. Nice.

From the botanic park, we headed directly to Milang to check in at the Milang Lakes motel. Didn't take photos on this occasion, because we've photographed Milang so often already. If you'd like to fill in the blank, see this post: Milang and Lake Alexandrina -- wetlands, sailboats, big skies and a lot of history. That shows all, tells all.

And as soon as we'd unloaded the car we went directly to Clayton Bay to do something we'd always wanted to do: photograph the sunset from there. These pictures show why!

Then it was back to the motel for supper and a quiet night's sleep. In the morning, we planned to photograph dawn over the wetlands, as we always do, before heading over to Monarto for a date with lions, giraffes, antelope, rhino, zebras, meerkats! Couldn't wait for this ... and we'll start the Monarto pictures in the next post. There's quite a lot, so it'll take two posts to cover even some of them.