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The Barossa

October 2003

Heading north from Adelaide I managed to get on the scenic drive to the Barossa, don’t ask how because I thought I was right in my directions to be on the main road, however it was a well made error, the drive was beautiful, everywhere so green, the flowers were lovely and the views as you go through the hills stunning. We stopped at Williamstown for morning tea, a small township with a caravan park, attractive buildings and a very nice café.
We were heading for Gawler as Clive had over ridden my choice of where to stay thinking Gawler being a larger town would be better. The caravan park at Gawler was quite good, but is right next to the main road, coupled with the fact that the park was quite full due to it being school holidays it was a little noisy. We decided to drop the van then go for a drive around town and visit the Information Centre. Whilst we realise that a lot of Information/Visitors centres are either solely manned by volunteers or have their permanent staff supplemented by volunteers and one applauds volunteers in any area, we do feel that the volunteers should be knowledgeable about their area, unfortunately we found in Gawler that this was not the case and the permanent staff appeared unwilling to assist. So armed with a mountain of leaflets and maps we had to select ourselves we decided to go and have a look at Tanunda.

The drive through the vineyards to Tanunda was delightful. Living as we do so close to the Swan Valley we thought we’d seen lots of vines, we were wrong! Travelling through the Barossa brings home the fact that South Australia has a much larger wine industry than we do in the West (I’m not saying a better one, just larger). The entrance into the town of Tanunda is quite stunning, you drive down a hill with walls on either side with shrubs at he top and bottom of the walls and there is a huge archway across the road with “Home of Jacob’s Creek” written on it, a real entrance to the town. Tanunda is a very pretty town, quite Germanic, lots of small shops and an excellent Visitors Centre. We had lunch at the Heidelberg Restaurant which was very good value for money, not only did you get excellent food and wine but also great information on where to eat and drink in the surrounding areas. After this brief visit to Tanunda we decided we would move on from Gawler and make Tanunda our base for the Barossa.

Returning to Gawler that day we took a walk up and down the main street, which has some great shops in it, and there is also a large Woolworths and Coles, so all shopping is fairly well catered for.
The next day dawned bright and sunny and we packed up and headed to the Caravan Shop for a spare part we needed. As I sat waiting for Clive the skies clouded over and by 9.30 a.m. it was raining. We are not having much luck with the weather this trip but so far it hasn’t been bad enough to stop us doing anything we wanted to.
The Tanunda Caravan Park is very good, unfortunately it also is next to the main road but the night noise was insignificant. The only complaint I had was that the whole area was grass, even the “road ways” between the rows of sites, which meant if it was wet or damp (as it was when we were there) your shoes/feet got wet every time you needed to go to the ablution block. Picky aren’t I?
So that Clive could enjoy a few drinks we decided to book on a wine tasting tour. We went with Valley Tours which cost $47.00 including lunch, which we thought was very good value for money. We were collected at the caravan park at approximately 9 a.m. and deposited back there about 3.30. During the course of the day we visited 4 wineries, and a business making wooden goods out of old wine barrels, had a wonderful and informative tour of the district, an excellent lunch at the Nuriootpa Hotel and great fun.

Nuriootpa is an interesting town, it is nearly all “owned” by the residents as a co-operative as I understand it the people/co-operative own a lot of the businesses in town (including the hotel and the supermarket/shopping centre) and their (personal) annual return depends on how much they spend in these businesses over the year. Our driver told us he spent $8,000 over the previous year and got a return dividend of $400. The high school in the town owns a vineyard which the students work in and manage and supply wine to seven restaurants in the USA, the school also owns a race horse which they train and race, due to the cost factor of horse ownership this venture is fully underwritten by the Colin Hayes stud but apparently is, like the winemaking, not in danger of running at a loss. The students involved in the horse programme get up early for all the training and literally do everything that is necessary to train and race the horse. Very interesting courses to be found at that particular high school. Some young men who were on our tour thought it might be time to go back to school

We had decided not to purchase wines on our trip but to return to the scenes (wineries), retry some of the ones we liked and purchase over the next few days. This we did, plus visits to a few more along the way. We decide that we were not going to purchase any wines that we could buy at the local bottle shop in Perth so this did narrow the field down somewhat. One of our first return visits was to Bethany winery. Bethany was one of the first settlements in the Barossa valley and has never developed into a town but has a very picturesque winery halfway up a hill, with lovely views over the surrounding countryside. Their flagship wine is a white port but we preferred their reserve port (no accounting for taste) and some of their whites so the first purchases were in the car.

Over the next few days we visited many of the wineries all of which I must say were very welcoming and very helpful, and despite what Clive will say I didn’t buy half of the Barossa (it wouldn’t fit in the van), we did purchase quite a few bottles though. We also visited the Lyndoch Lavender Farm which was lovely and a visit to the South Australian Company Store in Angaston was well worth it, as was Angas Park dried fruit and the cheese shop in Angaston, great food. We were a little disappointed in the standard and cost of café meals in Angaston. We explored all the by-ways and little townships, Light Pass was a delight with Luhr’s cottage, an 18th century cottage/museum which is left open, entry by donation and you can wander around and visualise what life would have been like living under those conditions in the 18th century. There is so much that still exists in this area from the early settlement days and it is a credit to the townspeople and I presume the South Australian Government that the history is being preserved so well.

No visitor to the Barossa should miss the Barossa Dam, whispering wall. This is a terrific feat or freak of engineering. The Barossa dam is set in a very attractive area (not difficult around there) and if one of you stands at one side of the dam close to the wall, the other walks across the wall to the far side, then you can have a conversation without the aid of mobile phone over a space of approximately 500 metres. If you didn’t know you would swear the person you are talking to is just a couple of feet away. It is absolutely amazing.

I could waffle on for pages about the beauties of this area but I won’t bore you (I hope I haven’t already). Many people we spoke to before going to the Barossa said it was very over-rated, commercialised and out to get as much money as possible etc. etc. We didn’t feel that anything was over-priced (apart from some food outlets) or overly commercial. Meals were available at very reasonable cost from countless cafes, pubs and restaurants, whilst there was always the souvenir shop in town there were many more shops to browse around and enjoy. The bakeries, sweet shops, chocolate shops were all amazing and the people extremely friendly and helpful. In fact one day in Tanunda I was waiting for Clive to return from somewhere and a lady approached me and asked if we were visiting etc. and after chatting for a few moments thanked us for coming to Tanunda and the Valley in general – not something that happens every day when you’re travelling.

Guess what – we enjoyed the Barossa, but all good things must come to an end and we had to pack up and head north-east to the Riverlands.

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