The House(s) of Fran_mart

For some reason - possibly the stress of chasing the tent down a cliff - I had a remarkably poor night's sleep.  But the wind was behaving appropriately when I got up to make the morning libation to/of the God of Caffeine.  Late on the previous evening a camper pulled in to the park and set up at a powered site.  The occupants were very quiet so not a problem.  This morning a lady emerged with a huge, and slightly strange looking, mutt.  It was interested in Tammy, and vice versa, and it emerged it was a recently shorn Groodle   I had not previously heard of this mixture and assumed - from the size and look of the beast it was a Gr eat Dane x P oodle cross,  Dr Google advises it is in fact a G olden R etriever x P oodle  cross so it was either: based on a Standard Poodle rather than the usual miniature; or a proof of hybrid vigour; or the product of a mis-identified male parent (on the assumption that the breeders knew what the female ...

I decided that we needed some essential supplies from Rutherglen (and Frances was running low on supplies from Yarrawonga).  This is not an area to visit in Summer so we fired up the camper and headed off on 29 November. The countryside was pretty dry looking as we headed down the Hume Highway towards Gundagai.  Getting very close to the border we noticed that someone had built a large wall.  I suspect this is not to keep out undocumented migrants from Victoria but to block noise.  We decided that the best tactic was to go to Yarrawonga first to get the olive oil and then head back.  There was quite a bit of water standing beside the road but nothing approaching a flood.  Haymaking was going on everywhere.  Some people were making rectngular bales and stacking the high, giving a stele effect to their paddocks ....  .. while others stayed with the (now) traditional round roll model.  To illustrate the amount of water I offer this...

As readers of the various posts about our trip to Adelaide will have realised we did a fair bit of shopping for bottled goods along the way.  This is a report on the quality of those purchase decisions (and to some extent on the purchase process - I refuse to use the term "experience"). Beer It came as a surprise to realise that all my beer stops were in the Clare Valley.  Possibly I was running out of room in the car by the time we got to Adelaide? Knappstein, Reserve Lager : this is produced close to the Knappstein Winery, well known as a source of good product.  As far as I could determine they only make this one style of beer, so the purchase was rather 'retail' with no tasting involved.  I am normally resistant to lager as it tends to be McBeer but this was definitely not that.  Very refreshing with a fruitiness in tatste and quite moreish: which could be dangerous at 5.6% ABV.  Will be looked into as an on-line purchase in the future.   Cla...

For some reason I took hardly any photographs on the last day we were in SA or the 1st day of the drive home.  So I have combined the last three days of this trip into one post. We did a longer walk on the Sunday morning going up to the waterfall.  It had no water!  I did take one image of a flowering Hakea laurina - presumably a residual plant from a house in the area at some stage. That was it for that day. The next morning was getting out of there day.  As: we had about 700km to drive,  were losing 30 minutes of daylight; and the weather forecast for later in the day was gross I was pleased to be on the road by 8:45 (including a short dog walk.  I was surprised at the amount of traffic on the freeway out of Adelaide but then realised that we were about 3 hours later than usual.  The drive to Pinnaro and into Victoria was uneventful as far as I can remember. Once across the border we stared to come across a number of oversize loads....

Not a reference to Roulette, nor the Broke Road (a good source of red wines) but our purchases around McLaren Vale this afternoon. As we set off this morning we noticed some Australian Wood Ducks on the park's swimming pool.  Their peace was soon disturbed when the Park Manager emerged and shouted at them.  Apparently guano doesn't mix well with chlorine, and the birds were reputed to be a source of salmonella. As we finished our subsequent tour of Playford lake I looked up and spotted a fat chap sitting high in a tree above the path.  At least the branch is in focus! Frances went to look at the Black Rose exhibition in the Art Gallery of South Australia.  As small dogs wold not be welcome in the Gallery I took her for a walk along the Torrens lake.  A strange sight was the looming refurbishment of the Adelaide Oval. When we lived in Adelaide one of the cultural laws was that members had to be able to look across the Oval at the Victor Yorke Richards...