25th May 2012 - 30th May 2012 - Crossing the border from the Northern Territory into South Australia, we continued to see more of the same vast landscape, even turning a little more red than in the outback. Also the clear blue skies gave way to a little well deserved drizzle of rain.
Our first stop in S.A was the Opal mining town of Coober Pedy. It can get very hot and humid there so 80% of the houses are built underground to escape the heat. I visited an underground church and Faye's House, a home dug out in the 50's by a 29 year old called Faye and she dug it out by hand, taking 10 years. The house was amazing to see, it was of good height and spacious, and if you need any extra rooms- then just keep digging through, and if you need cupboards- dig them out. Sometimes when you are are on a long road trip in the heat and only have each other for company, you can get on each others nerves, and today was that day, so Shan let me visit the underground town alone whilst he sizzled above ground.
We stayed in a nice- overground campsite and in the morning continued driving to Port Augusta. We didnt do too much there but we needed to break the driving.
The next again day we carried on to the capital of S.A Adelaide. We went sightseeing around the old buildings and went to the Immigration Museum. Adelaide is lovely but compared to the other cities (or perhaps because we have seen so much) it wasn't as big and bold and as much to see and do.
We spent a whole day at the Barossa Valley, Australia's biggest wine region. It is autum going on winter now and all the vines are bare, burnt orange autumy colour, which was pretty to see. We went to the cellar doors of some small winery's and then went to the biggies like Lehmanns, Penfolds (which I knew from Gambaros in Brisbane and knew it was expensive) so made the most of there, even trying some red wines. Then went to Jacob's Creek and sampled some of the famous familiar wines. Last stop was Wolf Blass, tried some wines before getting free samples of local produce and then sat down for a huge cheese platter which was delicious.
The next day we headed to Mt Gambier near the border, we stayed at a really nice campsite and in the morning before we left looked round the place and seen their famous Blue Lake, which changes colour in time for the seasonal change. It was a vivid sparkling blue we seen, and was set around high craters.
