Days 139-144 – Adelaide (25-30 Jan) Week 20

Left Aldinga for Adelaide to stay with friends Trevor and Margy who live in the Adelaide hills.  About an hours drive north east.  There are some major hills in this area and Trevor had given us directions for the least hilly way (5km climb) to get to there place but even so we overheated and had to pull over.  Definitely need to take the car in to get the radiator fixed later in the week.  Trevor and Margy live on 10 acres and have wonderful views over the ranges and sea glimpses.  It is a lovely spot to stay.   They have a male chocolate labrador (Kora) and a female yellow labrador (Halle), five chickens, an aviary of budgies and three horses.  So a real menagerie. Its great and Coco loves it.  They have five grown up children with only two still living at home (occasionally).  We had a lovely Australia Day breakfast with some of Margy’s friends and a couple of their children and their partners.  The weather was perfect, John cooked brekkie on the bbq (he doesn’t have to be at Rotary to cook brekkie) and we had croissants, champers, fruit platters, lamingtons and anzac biscuits to name a few.  Sarah (youngest daughter) and her boyfriend Brett gave us a demonstration on frisbee.  They are both very good players and play competition frisbee.  We didn’t know there was such a thing.  In the afternoon we went for a drive to town called Springton in the Barossa Valley to look at a church that was for sale that Rachel (Trevor and Margy’s oldest daughter) and her husband were interested in buying to live in.  Unfortunately it had been sold.  The next day (Wed) John and I went to the Mt Lofty Summit which overlooks the city.  It is 710 metres above sea level, it was destroyed in Ash Wednesday 1983 fires along with 28 human lives and 257,000+ livestock and animals (only I would remember that number right).  We watched a short DVD on the fire and the devastation was horrendous.  At the summit there is fire watch tower which really has a good vantage point for many miles.  From there we went to Waterfall Gully and was surprised to find there was water running.  Very very steep hills to get there and it is amazing to see houses perched right on the edge of a hill.  I would be nervous living in some of them.   Thursday John and I spent and the day at the Noarlunga Colonnade which is a really large shopping centre.  From 8.30am to 5.15pm we killed time while our radiator was being fixed.  Don’t want to see another shopping centre for a while.  Friday saw Trevor take the day off work and the four of us went to Hahndorf a lovely town in the Barossa valley.  One of the Adelaide Hills' most famous towns, Hahndorf is Australia's oldest surviving German settlement.  There is still a strong German flavour in Hahndorf, most evident in the smallgood outlets and German bakeries that line the bustling main street.  Sir Hans Heysen a famous painter was one of the original settlers here.  The Beerenberg jam factory is not far from town.  It is a great town to visit particularly if you are looking for different gifts and it is very popular with tourists.  We had lunch at Udder Delights following some cheese tasting which was delicious followed by dessert at No. 5 a wonderful chocolate shop.  They make chocolate with pure belgian chocolate and we had the best hot chocolate, a choice of milk or dark chocolate.  John and I tried the dark hot chocolate.  It was the delicious as were the Belgian waffles and the chocolate tiramusu.  Very decadent.  Later in the afternoon Trevor and Margy bought the deal of the year, a brand new Toyota Yaris that someone had won as a prize and didn’t want it.  They got a real bargain.  The highlight of Saturday was a KOALA.  Yes we saw our first wild koala.  It was about 8.20pm and we were out walking Coco when I spotted it.  Fantastic!!  It was a darker colour than we were expected and he/she was a very healthy looking specimen.  Not as high in the tree as I would have thought and not in particularly tall gum tree either.  We were chuffed to see it but as you would expect the one time we didn’t have the camera so couldn’t take a picture - but we did see it. 
Addendum – next morning went for a walk to see if I could find the koala again and I did (well might not be the exact one but it will do).