2013 # 1 Barossa Valley – Nuriootpa (The Meeting Place)

Welcome to our Photo Friends email.   So far we have stayed at Goulburn, Narrandera, Hay, Renmark and Nuriootpa.  It rained for the first two days on the road, but not heavily.  The Caravan park at Narrandera was surrounded by high levee banks all around to keep out the flooding Murrumbidgee, but alas, they did not hold and the waters flowed straight over the top – that was last year when Yenda, our old home town was surrounded by flood water and everybody had to vacate when the tiny Mirrool Creek, that you could normally jump over, became 27 km wide.    

When we caught up with our old friends, Betty and David Andrew at Hay, we were taken immediately to the newspaper office for Graeme to be interviewed.  In about 1985 Graeme installed the weather station for CSIRO at Hay, so Betty organised the interview.  Do you expect that a newspaper office would be bustling with breaking stories and people tearing around the office tearing out their hair?  Not in Hay.  It was the most laid back newspaper office imaginable.

We took a trip out to the weather station, and it all seemed to be in perfect working order. Graeme’s picture and information on the weather station will most likely be in next week’s Hay newspaper.  I think we missed yesterday’s deadline.

It is good to report that the land is beautifully green, the rivers and dams are all full, and hundreds of Koalas are happily munching on the Eucalypts at Narrandera and Renmark.  From the mighty Murrumbidgee to the huge Murray, the rivers are the life blood of the Irrigation areas of the region.  The Murray is the third longest navigable river in the world after the Amazon and the Nile, with a total length of 2,756 kilometres, 1,986 kms are continuously navigable.  In the early days, wool could travel on the paddle steamers from Western NSW all the way down to the Tailem Bend in SA.  What a pedigree!  It travels through 3 states and is fed by rivers in Western NSW such as the Darling, the Lachlan, and the Murrumbidgee.  Prior to the Paddle Steamers, it was the cameleers who carted the wool.  The stories abound!

Wildlife so far includes 5 emus together, a golden frog in the toilet at Hay and many Galahs.

After a wet night we headed off towards Wallaroo on Spencer Gulf where we expect to take the new vehicular ferry over to Lucky Bay. This will cut down some driving time and we will get to see a new part of SA including Tumby Bay. We will most likely take the coast road until we get to Ceduna, then it is “batten down the hatches” as we head across the Nullarbor. Highlight today was a visit to Maggie Beer’s kitchen for photos and fun. The strong winds made us pull up a lot sooner than we had anticipated, so we are snuggled down for the night in the beautiful Barossa Valley.