We are now travelling east towards Sydney, and it feels like we're on our way home. We fly out of Sydney two weeks today. This has been an amazing journey, and the last week has been no exception.
When Vernon friends of ours heard that we were planning to be in South Australia, they said, "You must meet our Aussies!", friends they'd made while on a teaching exchange several years ago. We were in touch by email, and the outcome was fabulous. We were hosted for three nights by one couple, and toured around Adelaide by another, ending up at a beach cafe for dinner and a sunset Friday night...
...and then Lloyd took over the kitchen to cook his famous ribs, roasted spuds, and "Imam Bayildi" (eggplant) meal Saturday night accompanied with lots of Aussie wine.
A view of the city of Adelaide from the hills...
We now feel we have many new friends and hope they come to Canada so we can return the hospitality. We left Adelaide on Sunday to travel a short distance to the Barossa, a wine region abut an hour and half north east of Adelaide. The purpose of this visit was to meet one of my stole commissioners! When Lloyd suggested Australia as a destination last year, I said yes, on condition that we meet the folks who commissioned stoles (one in the Barossa and another in Sydney). Kirsten Due commissioned two stoles for her husband Noel in October 2014 and December 2013 (See http://janetarmstrong.com/testimonials at the bottom of the page, and for even more info see the blog posts for those dates). Especially thrilling was our timing...Noel was installed in his new position Sunday night, and we were able to attend the service. It was a real privilege to meet Noel and Kirsten and members of their community. And of course very exciting for me to see him wearing the first stole I created for him, The River of God stole. We stayed overnight with Kirsten and Noel, and the next morning Noel took us on a little tour around the valley. This was settled by German-speaking immigrants in the mid 1800s, and has morphed into an important wine region, for cool climate wines. (I have had some difficulty with this adjective of "cool" because it's not like the Okanagan cool climate! Here, they get a little frost in the winter, but the "cool" refers to the nighttime temps, not the daytime.) it's a very attractive place, relatively green with all the vineyards, with many villages of old stone houses and churches, mainly Lutheran. Here we are overlooking the valley...
It was a short, sweet and intense visit to both Adelaide and the Barossa, and I look forward to maintaining these friendships.
We left the Barossa around noon, heading east along the Sturt Highway and then the Murray River Highway. The Murray River is hugely important to agriculture in South Australia and Victoria states. An irrigation scheme was first developed in the 1880s by a couple of Canadians who had done something similar in Ontario. The river is navigable for most of its length, and this was the only way to get to the Australian outback until highways were constructed in the 20th C. There are still some paddle wheelers plying the waters as cruises for tourists, and we went on one at Mildura Tuesday afternoon.
This boat is over 100 years old, and is lovingly maintained. Wood is burned to provide the steam energy. The paddle wheels are on the sides. We went through one of the many locks on the river...
The water level remains fairly constant throughout the year because of the weirs holding it back, and thus there are several locks for boats to move from one level to the next.
The captain in the wheel house...
The original steam engine...
Without this water for irrigation, there would be no agriculture (grapes for wine, table and raisins; citrus, avocados, and almonds; and market gardens). The native scrub land is dry and sandy, very arid and desert-like, and we have been driving through lots of that. We happened to catch a radio interview about the Murray-Darling River basin, and it's a huge challenge to maintain a balance between competing needs for water...agriculture, tourism (river cruises, fishing, houseboats, ski boats) and ecology (maintaining wetlands for native flora and fauna, especially at the mouth of the river). The Murray rises in the Snowy Mountains to the east and the Darling rises in Queensland to the north--both are dependent on rainfall and that is dropping with climate change.
Today we are continuing the journey east to spend three nights in the Snowy Mountains before going to Canberra and then Sydney by the 24th.
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