Fleurieu 2011: Clarendon, McLaren Vale and Myponga Reservoir

The bakery in Clarendon has been serving locals and travelers since 1901; the town has been there since about 1860.

You get your breakfast at the bakery and drive around to Riverbend Park...

Tea (or coffee, if you like), and a fresh cream cherry pastry (yum!) while you view the beautiful cliffs
above the meandering Onkaparinga River.

A sign on the opposite side of the lawns tell the story of Riverbend Park, Clarendon.

Vines bask in the sun in the McLaren Vale wine region

Many vines are netted to save the ripening crop from birds.

The wines from McLaren Vale are exported all over the world ... and it all starts right here, on the vine in the sun.

The hills burn brown in summer, but from the top of them you look out over oceans of green...

The vineyards spread on, beyond McLaren Vale too, into other wine regions.

Ah! a shady spot -- with coffee! -- at the Woodstock cellar door...

The visitor passes under gorgeous flowering vines. Anyone know what these flowers are?
They look like fuchsias, but they can't be -- can they??

Most recommended: Woodstock at McLaren Vale.

On the main drag at the town of McLaren Vale itself -- the Almond Train...

All aboard for tastings of almonds, olives, local honeys --

The Almond Train would temp a saint ... stand ready with our credit card!

Take the back road out of the Vale ... this is a road trip, so enjoy the scenic rout...

Heading south out of McLaren Vale ... and if you ever had cause to wonder what Lionel Richie was doing in
early April of 2011, well ... now you know where he was!

Sellicks Beach ... the green seas of the Gulf St. Vincent on a glorious day.

Take the picture, quick -- there are people on the beach! Seriously, if this were any beach in Europe...
suffice to say, we like Sellicks Beach just the way it is. Duh. 

This zoom shot shows the pipeline headed south: it carries water...

...and as you head south, the landscape begins to look parched indeed. Hence the pipeline!

Paddocks given a little irrigation soon green up. Makes you wish they could all be irrigated...

Watch out for kangaroos, next two kilometers! You'll rarely see them in daytime but at night they're
inclined to bolt right across the road ... sadly, they have no road sense at all. 

Shade trees offer welcome relief from the sun...

...in a region where beef and dairy cattle graze many a hillside.

In this area, Sellicks Beach to the lower slopes around the town of Myponga, it seems to be mostly dairy and beef...

The perfect pastoral landscape: haymaking in South Australia --

-- but as you climb to the top of the hills the countryside becomes arid. Sheep thrive up here.

Approaching Myponga Reservoir...

Myponga Dam itself ... it's supplied about 5% of Adelaide's water since 1962.

A lookout and photo-op site offers a great place to stop for a picnic, or just for pictures...

Late in summer, the water level is down a bit, but still looking good. Want to drive across the dam head?

The road heads down into the gorge, and by this sign: watch out for falling rocks!

Myonga Reservoir dam head, speed limit 20kph. Alas, recently the old fencing at the roadside has been
replaced by high concrete walls ... now, you can't see a darned thing, and stopping is verboten. Dang.

Climbing out on the other side of the gorge, you have a view out over sheep paddocks to the distant
Gulf St. Vincent ... and that's the little town of Carrickalinga, about a mile away.

Perched on the hilltop above Carrickalinga is this bronze compass, with distances to many points
on the Fleurieu ... where to next?!

How nice to set off in perfect weather! Blue skies, some heat in the day, but not too much. First stop: the bakery in Clarendon for the makings of breakfast, and then -- across the bridge on the Onkaparinga River, with the Mount Bold dam right there at your left hand ... hang a right onto the road by Clarendon Oval (meaning, the cricket field), and stop in a spot of shade at Riverbend Park for tea and coffee. Great way to start the trip.

This time around we were only meandering. We'd actually planned a road trip to the Limestone Coast, but it wasn't going to work out for us that year, so Jade's suggestion was to just wander pleasantly around our own backyard for a few days and ... relax. How often do you do a long road trip and return home so tired, you need a vacation!

So ... McLaren Vale. A couple of wineries, including Woodstock, and the Almond Train, where it's absurdly easy to spend money. We bought local almonds, honey from Kangaroo Island, and local olives. Delicious. The store is built inside antique rolling stock -- an original railway carriage.

Next, Sellicks Beach (or at least the cliffs above), and a welcome breath of cool sea air. Around noon, the day was starting to get warm. We weren't in any hurry to go anywhere in particular, so ... how about going over to Myponga Reservoir, and drive across the dam head? For the first time, we actually took the time to stop at the lookout on the hillside beyond the dam, and discovered the bronze compass. The Fleurieu really is a big place in a small space.

Next on this trip: Second Valley, Rapid Bay, Cape Jervis and ... onward.

Food Fight at Christies Beach!

The Beachside Food & Wine Festival at Christies Beach draws crowds. Big ones...

This was a few days earlier ... not so crowded...

The weather was getting steadily hotter all that week.
Christies Beach looks like the perfect vacation spot.

A long-shot ... this guy was way out on the horizon, and headed out, not in.

The beach was the place to be: camel and pony rides! Dave had wanted to do this, but it was HOT
and the lines were long. So ... another time. 

Camels, green sea and sailing ships. Perhaps only in South Australia!

The One and All is a training ship, built up at North Haven, at Port Adelaide.

The sand sculptures were all finished by now, and on display...

Dave, and the Octopus Garden -- a few days before. Thank heavens we got all our arty pictures before
the food festival: on the day, the thing you saw most of was the back of the guy in front of you!

Sunday was HOT for the food festival itself, and one One and All was just one of many vessels offshore.

Jade soon put away the big camera and switched to the phone for pictures --

In this crush, the Samsung Galaxy camera was just as good! And --

-- the closer to the food you got, the harder it was to find a picture...

...or a place to sit, or get out of the sun.

Wow -- take the picture, quick! There's activity on the beach ... people, and all!

The weather for the Beachside Food & Wine Festival can be summed up in one word: HOT! It was almost the first really hot day of the season, and Christies Beach was hopping. The event usually draws a big crowd, apparently, and this year ... well, if we had to guess, we'd say the organizers were caught unawares.

The perfect weather plus the sand sculpture exhibition, organized by Sandstorm Events, about 15 whole meters away from the first of the food and wine, brought a lot more people than they appear to have expected. You could deduce this from the clues at hand, to quote Mr. Holmes, because ...

Well, no place to park, for a start. We wound up a kilometer away, up a hill. Not enough shade, by a long shot, especially in this kind of heat. Nowhere to sit! Many people (ourselves included) were standing to eat lunch, in the shade of our own hats. Take note, Festival Organizers: think through your parking and seating for the 2014 event!

The One and All was offshore ... she's a training ship, built at North Haven, on the Port River, in 1985 ... see her website right here. And she was only one of many vessels out on the water. You saw everything from kayaks to some of the big fishing charter boats. And on the beach itself, camels and ponies for the kids. And the big kids. Dave would have been on a camel, if the day hadn't been so hot, and the lines had been a tad shorter. The same entrepreneurs organize camel rides at Victor Harbor in the summer, too. Now, there's a thought...

The biggest challenge was the NOISE!!! Heaven alone knows who or what the live band was supposed to be, but they were so far over-amped, with loudspeakers every 20 meters along the waterfront, your whole body vibrated with the "music." Jade quickly plugged the ears with wet tissue, and it was absolutely bizarre: mostly deaf, body vibrating fiercely. Note to Festival Organizers: turn it down a  bit next year!

Dave got some very nice local wines (including a Moscato to die for), and we had Korean and Spanish food (spring roll, kebabs, paella), and Jamaican lime tea, which were nice. The food was along the lines of "ethnic fast food" -- interesting, gave you a chance to try something you wouldn't ordinarily have.

So Jade quickly put away the big camera and switched to the Samsung Galaxy's little 5MP camera, built right into the phone. All the longer shots you see in this post were done with the Fuji Finepix HS10; the last five images -- people; and that one shot of the beach -- are from the phone! Thy don't have quite the resolution of the "real" camara, but dang, it's handy to be able to take simple shots from the palm of your hand!

Will we do the event next year? Hmmm. Depends ... on the weather, the parking, and the band. Put it this way, if you're cruising half a mile away, looking desperately for anyplace to park the Millennium Possum, and the band sounds loud even from there -- keep right on cruisin' and go for coffee. You could do worse than The Boat Shed, at Hallett Cove, and we'll take you there in an upcoming post.