SA and WA Dec 2024 – Apr 2025

Start of our journey 15-Dec-2024

After a short delay to sort out Jen’s foot we started our long planned SA (South Australia) and WA (West Australia) trip. We made, by now a customary, stop by Phil and Deb in Little Hartley. We love this place and stayed for two days on their lovely property.

Moving on 17-Dec-2024

We said goodbye to Phil and Deb and made our way to Bathurst to get another X-ray of Jen’s foot, it is healing but we want to keep an eye on how fast. We stopped on our way at Rosnay Cellar door in Conowindra (we’ve been here before) for a few bottles of wine and a nice bottle of olive oil. We arrived at our destination for the day in Forbes for the night.
We found a nice stop close to the Blaney river and when it is not flooded its a great spot for a night.

Arno went to the the car museum to learn that this was perfect timing as after more than 40 years running the museum the owners were ready to sell up and retire.

Thursday 19-Dec

Today, and for the next few days, we will be mostly driving to make sure were in Adelaide on Sunday where we will meet some of our friends we’ve haven’t seen for a long time and pickup Jen’s new bike.

We stayed the night in Hay.

Friday 20-Dec

On our way towards Adelaide we had a lovely lunch/wine tasting at Trentham Estate winery. For here we made our way to Tranquil Waters Cullulleraine camp site for the night.

One thing Arno wanted to do on this trip is look for silo or street art as we’ve seen a lot in Queensland. So far we seen a few and here are some images:

Saturday 21-Dec

Our destination for today is the Murray Bridge Tourist park. We are crossing into South Australia so we had to dump (most) of our vegetables and any fruit we had left over in the fridge. When we got to the Yamba Quarantine Station, Jen led the officer in our caravan while chatting away. Her charm worked and we could move on without emptying the fridge of our veggies 😊. We stopped to see the Murray River and look at the Tree of Knowledge that shows the flood levels since 1956 (that is the top sign on the tree). There is also a Big Pelican that started its life as a float in the Loxton Mardi Gras parade during the late 1970s and now sits proudly near the Tree of Knowledge in the Riverfront Holiday Park.

Sunday 22-Dec

Today was only a short ride to our friends in Adelaide, we haven’t seen them for a long time and we also had Jen’s new bike delivered. Shaun and Sonja life in a beautiful house and Shaun, who likes to ride his bikes, has a great workshop and had assembled Jen’s bike. He even charged the battery! We spent the Sunday at there place and caught up on many things. When we left we agreed that we would meet each other rather sooner than later.

We had about an hours drive to our planned caravan park in the Barossa. We will be here for 4 nights.

Monday 23-Dec

Time to visit some wineries, there are close to 200 wineries in this area so we will not visit them all, we might try a few only. We also did our shopping for Christmas and were very impressed by the Barossa Fresh supermarket. what an amazing store with so many beautiful fresh produce, we stocked up well for Christmas with prawns, ham, and lots of cheeses.

Tuesday 24-Dec

More wineries today and we think we have enough wine to last us at least a week 😊. Jen also tested out her bike and it is going very well.

Wednesday 25-Dec

Christmas day and it will be a hot one, the forecast is for 37 c later in the afternoon. So we decided to do a run on the bikes and test out the Barossa Trail. There is a nice breeze and thanks to out e-bikes we don’t have to work too hard. The bike trail is very nice and winds through some lovely vineyards and cattle paddocks. We decided to try if the Novotal would serve us a coffee (most things are closed today or you had to book way in advance). The ride was 16 KM one way but no coffee, we filled up our water bottles, had a bit of a cool down in the lobby of the hotel before we made our way back.

we had a lovely Christmas lunch (prawn and mango salad) at the caravan and spent some time at the pool. We will be sure to be out here tomorrow as now the caravan park is almost empty but it seems to be fully booked from tomorrow onwards.