Excuses, excuses

why I'm not blogging so frequently: I've been working on getting my study transformed into a craft room. It is coming along splendidly and I will post photos when it is completed.

In the meantime I guess I had better try to upload some photos I took in the Barossa Valley. I hope Blogger is co-operating tonight.

In the last post I mentioned that the Barossa Valley was settled by Germans in the 19th century. When we were last here in 1990, evidence of German heritage was still quite strong. However, that seems to have diminished in the intervening years. German restaurants and bakeries are rare now, and there are only 2 butchers left producing the traditional German sausages and other smallgoods. We did manage to find a bakery that made those beautiful large soft pretzels with the large salt grains on them. I could eat them daily. Here we are at a lookout above the valley, brandishing our pretzels. MIL really got into the spirit of things.

It was a bit too breezy for our picnic though, so we retreated to the hoon-mobile we hired. What a lurid color! But it seemed to be quite a popular car color around Adelaide, we saw it frequently. You might just be able to see the MWC and MIL sitting in the back seat getting ready to eat lunch. We had a panoramic view of the Barossa Valley from here.
This church and cemetery has a very German look to it, and there are churches everywhere. Very picturesque.

We also saw a number of thatched roof buildings.


One memory I had of our previous trip to Adelaide and the Barossa was of our young sons' joy in visiting Gumeracha, home of the largest rocking horse in the southern hemisphere and where you could climb to the top. There is a toy factory and shop next to it which specialises in wooden toys. It was also where I finally relented and bought them old fashioned wooden pop guns. (I had never let them have toy guns before). I'll never forget their happy little faces. For nostalgia's sake, I bought them each a pop gun and I think they were both tickled by that. Occasionally I hear the gentle pop of a pop gun coming from their bedrooms. Remember, they're 20 and 22 years old!

The Barossa is famous for its wines, and vineyards fill a lot of the landscape. We did a tour of the Seppelts winery, founded by a Prussian. There are thousands of date palms throughout the property. The Seppelts developed a scheme for their employees to plant the palms during the Depression, so they could remain employed. Unfortunately the business is no longer in family ownership.
An unexpected highlight for me of our trip to the Barossa was practically right across the street from where we were staying. The owner of a craft shop was retiring and selling all her stock at great discounts. I bought stamps, embossing powders, stickers, paper, glitter and a craft punch at a fraction of what it would normally cost. I was a happy camper.