Clare SA

We have been in Clare now for a week.  It is a lovely little town, surrounded by wineries and a lot of beautiful old stone buildings, just over an hour north of Adelaide.  The caravan park here is beautiful, lots of big sites and very shady. Below are some pictures of wineries and the surrounding districts

 Sevenhill Winery, established by the Jesuits in the early 1800's. It is still completely owned by them.  The winery was originally established to make altar wine , and they still produce beautiful fortified wines.

 Underground cellars

 The church in the vineyards

 Crypt underneath the church.  Only brothers or priests who die on the grounds can be buried here, below is the earliest date I could find, (1865) the latest was about late 1998 ( I think)

Our neighbors "Cuddles" and Cheryl, who have treated us to a couple of wonderful musical evenings under our awning.  A real highlight!

 Old copper mine at nearby town of Burra

 A tribute to the Cornish miners who settled here.  This statue is enormous

 Looking out over the Barossa Valley

Across the Nullarbor

We left Esperance on 14/1 and put in fairly long days drives, 4 nights later arrived in Clare SA, 1 hr north of Adelaide. We really liked the drive across ( did it almost exactly 3 years ago on our first trip ) but still had fun.  A lot of people we speak to hate it, but it is so different to other places.  We stayed at roadhouses with powered sites over 3 nights, basically pull up, connect the power ( for air conditioning ) and take off early the next morning. Below is a piece of Skylab which disintegrated over WA on reentry, I think in 1979. It was a huge event at the time, with rewards to who ever found the first parts.

 Wild camels, about 7 of them, near the road

 Stopped at this roadhouse, diesel about $1.56 per litre, which was a lot less than we were expecting to pay .

 Apart from the official border time changes, there are incremental changes on the way.  We just stayed on WA time until the border at SA.

 Border village with the "Big Roo"

 Another off the record time change

 Looking back west at the sand dunes of Eucla, near the WA/SA border

 Nullarbor roadside stop and camp

 Head of the Great Australian Bight, stunning scenery, the pictures don't really show the height of the sheer cliffs.

 Back to "civilization" Wudinna SA

 Couldn't resist playing on the tractor

  8 metre wide load approaching. We are completely off the road, after being warned over our UHF radio by the pilot vehicle travelling about 1 km ahead of the load. We always keep our UHF turned on when we travel, worth its weight in gold.

 Wheatfields starting again after the NP