North to the Flinders, South to Clare Valley...

Hello everyone,

I hope you have had a happy easter. Our car was finally fixed right before the easter weekend, so we were able to travel outside of Adelaide and see some amazing countryside over Kim's four day holiday break. We drove north through the towns of Port Wakefield, Quorn, and Hawker. Our friend Paul went with us for the weekend as well. He is a teacher from Grand Junciton, CO also here on exchange for a year. It was a spectacuar long drive, giving us our first take of the outback...








Our first stop was the small town of Quorn were we took a camel ride on the Pichi Richi Camel tours. Our guide and operator of the camel farm was Grant. (on the left) He was quite funny, and a great guide. He had two little boys and was convinced without a doubt that raising and maintaining his eight camels was much easier then his kids! The camel tour was great and a really neat experince giving us a unique way to see the countryside as the sunset...





The next two days were fantastic. We drove three hours north of Quorn through the sparsley populated dusty outback to the Flinders Ranges National Park. Along the way we stopped at Yorumbilla and saw some sacred Aboriginal caves. The caves had ancient drawings and carvings on the rock walls. At the Flinders Ranges Park we camped at the Wilpena Pound campground. While we were there we did some fantastic hiking up to highest point in the park, St. Mary's Peak. The highlight of the trip was when we took an awesome scenic flight over the mountain ranges. Definetly check out some of the photos in our photo gallery!




Our return drive back took us through the towns of Peterbourough, Burra, and Clare. It was a very long eight hour drive through dry rolling hills. I think we saw more sheep and windmills then cars for the first three hours. Later in the day, we stopped in the town of Clare for lunch and to visit some of the wineries. Clare and the Clare valley is one of the world famous wine regions in South Australia. It is especially know for the Reisling wines it produces. There are over 35 diffrent winiries and vineyards in this charming little town. We visited three wineries, Sevenhill, Pikes, and Nealson Rocks. Sevenhill wines were outstanding. They had a great park ground to walk around on outside an a magnificent church on the property.



Later next week Kim will finally get her much needed two week fall break. We are planning on doing some traveling during that time to Melbourne and Sydney and will keep you up to date with more photos and travels as we go along...

Carma and the Nun

Hello blogville,

Greetings from Down Under. Kim has been doing most of the postings, but I have been busy snapping the photos and updating them to the blog. Anyway, we have had an interesting few weeks lately involving car troubles and religon. I know your thinking to yourself how in the world can these two things be related?! Well let me explain. It all started when I mistakenly rear ended an old lady as she abruptly stopped on a green light for a pedistrian whizzing by on a bike. I was not even going that fast but in the process I managed to spill coffee all over me and dent the front fender pretty darn good. Well, no one was hurt thank God, and as I exchanged insurance with the other driver I came to find out that the sweet old lady I ran into was a Nun. Her name was Sister Dorine Hayes from Ashford, South Australia and she was a card carrying member of the Catholic Church Insurance Group. God bless her. I did find this slightly amusing considering the circumsantaces, but, I think her holy presence helped relieve my anger for getting into an accident...



Well our car insurance in Australia took care of most of the damage and we were only out a few hundred dollars for our deductible, but we had to wait nearly three weeks for them to repair our car. Kim was able to get to work via the train and I rode my bike to get around. Finally, ater a long wait and inconvience, we were able to pick up our car. We were planning to set off on a road trip to the Barossa Valley with our friend Paul, who is also an exchange teacher from Colorado. Ironically after picking up the car and driving a mere 10km, we instantly realized something was drastically wrong with the car. For starters the air conditioning was not working and there was a funny burning smell, similar to burnt pancakes. A few minutes later we lost all of our radiator fluid, and antifreeze, which caused the car to overheat and chug to a grinding stop. So, we are now in the process of trying to sort this out with insurance company and secure a rental car in the meantime... Somehow their assurance of "no worries mate will take care of it", does not instill a whole lot of confidence in me at the moment. I sincerly hope I am wrong on this one and they do take care of it and make it right so Kim and I will have "no worries" regarding our car. Maybe this is the carma from hitting the nun in the first place coming back around. Well hopefully Kim and I can get this car fiasco straightened out! Well, in the meantime drive safely out there and have a great easter holiday!