Road Trip 2014: Adelaide, Naracoorte, The Grampians

After the underwhelming experience that was Kangaroo Island, we were pretty much ready to make our way back to Melbourne, but we had a few stops to get through before that. First was to visit emmy’s friends in Adelaide, the city of churches. Originally we were only going to spend one night there but due to my accident we had to spend three nights there and had no idea what to do. We ended up just trying to catch back up on as much rest as possible, that’s not to say that we did absolutely nothing there, we had a couple of outings, one to Hahndorf, and the other to Glenelg, unfortunately we didn’t have the inclination to venture out to the Barossa Valley or Mount Lofty despite neither being particularly far, just a lot of effort with the baby.

First, we visited Hahndorf on emmy’s advice as she loved it the last time she was there, it is a quaint town on the outskirts of Adelaide, the theme is Germany, well, it’s where the first German settlers settled near Adelaide and now it is a tourist destination. It’s pretty nice, and well established, with a few German restaurants, but the main attraction really is its good looks, with the main road lined with big trees. There’s also the Beerenberg strawberry farm where there are many things – not just strawberries – to dig your teeth into, mostly sauces, jams, and the like. A street full of artisan stores selling all kinds of trinkets and fashions, emmy says Yes Please!

The following day we went to Glenelg for brunch, a visit to the beach and a wander down the main street. This beach kicks arse, a pier where the kids can jump off like crazy teenagers that they are and crystal clear turquoise waters and soft, fine, white sand. A strip of shops with some nice iced creameries along the way (recommend the Danish Andersens one), beats any beach near Melbourne as far as I’m aware. We also paid a visit to the xmas decorations at night (even though it was freezing and smelly as hell) which were quite comical. The next day we left for Naracoorte quite early.

Naracoorte is famous for its caves, heritage listed and all that, as well as being relatively close to a bunch of other Limestone coast attractions (mainly wineries), but we didn’t bother leaving our accommodation because it was hot and we were tired, the bed and breakfast we stayed at was quite lovely as well. We left for the Grampians nice and early the next day.

The Grampians are a beautiful place, and there are so many walks to do there, short and long, too bad that it’s too hard (for me) to carry a little one around them all. We settled for those that were really close to car parks and staying inside mostly (again, really hot). I wanted to have a go at one of the easy big hikes, like Mount William or The Pinnacle, but it was just going to be hot and not great light for my photography, so I settled for night shots of The Pinnacle from our accommodation (not bad, I will probably do another post with some HDR shots that I took on the trip).

Stars in the Grampians

Me at The Balconies

View south from the Balconies lookout

So all in all, we didn’t do much, I got to the Balconies lookout (would’ve been good for sunrise), Mackenzie Falls (just before all the other people arrived) but without enough time to nail the shot that I wanted, and a quick look at Boroka Lookout for a sunrise (it’s not really a sunrise spot). Oh well, another time, maybe I’ll take Oscar camping there and we can do all the things that I missed or stuffed up here.

Food:
In Adelaide, we had one home made meal, one bbq, one Vietnamese restaurant meal, traditional German at the Hahndorf Inn (massive portions, for two means, for 3-4), a brunch at Zest Cafe in Glenelg (nice), iced cream at Andersens (yum), we’ll need to try some more places to get a better feel for the quality of Adelaide’s restaurants though.In Naracoorte, we just cooked up our own steaks at the bed and breakfast, it was okay, but I’ve done better.
In the Grampians, we didn’t venture out of Halls Gap for food, we had burgers at Basecamp Eatery (would’ve been good except the burgers were a bit dry, where’s the sauce!?!?!), the Spirit of Punjab, lol, was okay, would’ve been good if we had spoons or even forks (our room had neither), and also at the Livefast cafe, nothing special, neither was Coolas ice creamery, but that might’ve been too dependent on the flavours we chose.

Accommodation:
As I said, in Naracoorte we stayed at Carolynn’s Cottages, and they were by far the best accommodation that we stayed at for the whole trip, comfortable bed, nice decor, and comfortable chairs, very accommodating, beautiful property with a serene garden.
We stayed at the Grampians View Motel in Halls Gap, it’s at the southern end of Halls Gap and has a very nice view of the Pinnacle, also, there are a million kangaroos there in the late afternoon. The room though lacks a kitchenette, and is a bit dated, we stayed in the deluxe spa room which is a bit like a love motel with the black and red decor. There is a small swimming pool which we didn’t use, but it looked clean enough

That’s it for the road trip, I’m not sure what comes next, we haven’t been doing much lately and I’m not sure that I can plan much in this daze that I’m in, any way, I’ll have some more pictures from the road trip once I get through processing them.

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