Where On Earth?

Its Funny

Or Ironic, whichever you think fits best. A few weeks before coming out here, I remember My Mum saying something along the lines of 'You'll end up somewhere totally random, in the middle of nowhere. Although 'ending up' sounds a bit final, I am in fact in the middle of nowhere, and will be for a few more months, which in travel time is a fairly long time to stop in one place. Ah Mum, how did ya know!

The actual name of where I am is Willalooka. Its in Southern Australia, about 3 hours South of Adelaide, and the nearest town are Keith in one direction, and Naracoorte in the other, both about half an hour in the car.

Willalooka has within it, the Shop/tavern/motel where I live and work, a park, 3 houses, a town hall, Hockey field and lots and lots of farm land. Its pretty quiet, but a good place to save money, as there's not much to spend it on! Once you get over the novelty of living in a shop/pub. . .

Its pretty gorgeous, scenery-wise, which as I'm sure you've guessed by now. These are a few from just outside my door

The Following photos are

Road to the left

Road to the Right

Road directly in front

As I said, pretty remote

The Park. . . . in case you didn't guess

And a few of the Tavern, from the outside. The light is pretty awesome here about 4-5pm, being that its autumn (yay!)

And,

Although there is nowhere where I can get a direct picture of the sunset, as its kinda up and down hilly, with lotsa tree's, in the true spirit of being a sunset geek, I persevered, and did not tooo badly

More next time, trying to stretch it out, as I'll be here a while =P

Cheers for Listening!

w

The Day I Went To Jail

Question for you

What does an overactive imagination + too many thriller/murder mystery book and arriving at a location that looks a bit like this. . . . . . . .

Equal to?

If you think its me, arriving at a hostel in the shape of a jail and feeling a wee bit eerie. . . . . then your right. Plus the locals seemed a bit odd, there were lots of llama's in a field beside the Jail and there was a small dog giving me evils at the front. Seriously, glaring! Although, to be fair, when i got inside, sure, it still looked a bit like a prison but it wasn't toooo bad.

The location of this hostel, is Mount Gambier, 6 hours south of Adelaide, where I went for a few days as I was told that it was pretty. And to be fair, 10 mins from my prison there are the lakes of Mount Gambier, which is a town built on and around lakes, caves and volcanic craters. The Blue lake, given its very imaginative name due to the extreme colour of its waters

It was, ironically, pretty blue. Although peak time for the colour is summer (Nov-Jan). There's a few walks around, lots of hills, which, due to the fact I've had no exercise for about 2 months, was fairly knackering, but most defiantly worth it!

These are the second lake, which has the hill walk around it, and due to the '4 seasons in one day weather' I experienced it actually managed to remind me a bit of Scotland

In the picture above, you can see the hill behind. There's another hill, higher and slightly to the left. Unfortunately, at this point in time, the battery in my camera died. So there are no pics from the top, which is a bit of a bugger. However it did allow me just to look, and watch and enjoy the sights around me, which sometimes i forget to do, because I'm so excited about being able to take photos of stunning scenery.

However, at the end of my walk (about 10k's overall, it hurt for 3 days after!), I asked my camera very nicely, and it gave me one final photo. . .

So, the lessons of this story are, If your going to somewhere called The Jail, yes, its going to be weird, and. . . .Always charge your batteries!!!

Thanks for watching!

Barossa Vally, 6 Backpackers. . .

Ah, don't worry, there was no damage (sorry to disappoint =P)

So, before we begin with the pics, Barossa Valley, home to lots and lots and lots of grapes! Which apparently they use for the wine, or something. Barossa is apparently Australia's most famous wine region and is about an hour and a half outside of Adelaide. The region itself is 40K by 30K making is easy to get between towns and wineries. So 6 of us jumped on our tour bus (joined by others as well) at about 8am and headed off to see what we could see (or drink what we could drink if you prefer.

As it was a tour bus we did some touristy stops along the way

The first one being the Worlds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Largest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Rocking Horse!

I Kidd you not, welcome to the weirdness that is Australia, measurements below, but it really is HUGE!

Next stop was not quite as huge, but no less bizarre! The dam below is called the Whispering Wall, named because if you stand at one end, and send a friend to the other end, which is pretty far (100m) whisper, then you can hear them. Its really really freaky! Really weird acoustics, but fun anyways. Obviously all comments passed between our group were very polite!

And so, after our touristy stops it was on to our first winery. Bearing in mind the time was about 10:30am at this point, my fave quote of the day was 'Ok, now seriously, where is the wine!' (No, not from me!)

Welcome to Jacobs Creek, the first winery on our tour, which was good because its a brand of wine that I've actually heard of, and can drink! it was really nice, very modern with gorgeous scenery (see, i went for photos! Not to get drunk in the middle of day. . . )

One for me, then one for meeeee

These ones are from the next winery, which offered too many red wine samples sadly, but still very scenic. Also lots of tips about smelling and looking and swirling (not too much though) and then sipping and sucking through your teeth to taste things like cherries and black pepper. . . apparently!

And the next one, another really nice location, and with this winery we got a tour, seeing the grapes being all smushed and haunted cellars and so on, tis the good stuff, although i know now why i never drank port or sherry. . . eeewwww

Attempting to be creative in photography. . . . . . not passing out in the bar! Believe what you will!

And so we all trundled on home. I should probably mention that we did get lunch included for anyone that's worried about the space where my liver used to be. It was very scenic, and now I could probably drink Rose (which i already could) and some White wines, so maybe am becoming slightly more sophis-ti-mi-cated. But then again my opinions of Red Wine, Port, and Sherry (eeeeeewwwwww) probably let me down!

Thanks for Listening

Adelaide at Night

So, here's some more on Adelaide


I was having one of those evenings where I was feeling restless, so off I went with the ol' camera, and I'm pretty glad that I did. First thing that caught my eye was the fountain in Victoria Square . . .



It can be almost hypnotising when its all lit up


But wait. . . there's more

More meaning that I wandered down to the river and the jets of water were lit us as well, changing colours every 30 secs or so. The first pic is pointing towards the festival centre, which was all lit up as well. Did get some stares from going oooooooo quite a bit. . . .

On my way back from the river the exhibit9ion called 'The Northern lights' caught my eye. It was one of those things that are adevertised throughout the city, but I'd never really paid Attention to, but I'm glad that I managed to see. Basically lights and images in amazing colours are projected onto buildings like the University, state library and museums. which left them looking a bit like this. . . . (more oooo's from me, but this time there was a crowd, so there was less staring!)

So, as it goes, Adelaide, awesome in the light, awesome at night!

Thanks for listening

Louise