Sat 3 Nov - Naracoorte SA

A morning of some housekeeping - washing, more blogging and a list created for shopping at the Grampians - was broken up by a nice "creek walk" around Naracoorte. It goes for about 5km as and is very pleasant. They are making a bit of a deal here that Naracoorte was voted Australia's tidy town back in 1994 (whatever happened since then?) and we now also encountered Tidy Street both in 1993 and in 1994. As we were walking the "creek walk", we noticed a number of discarded tires here and there on the ground. Obvious joke: "Tidy Town 1994, Tire Town 2012". ...

Back in town, we had a nice cuppa at a cafe and spent some time in the library until 12pm for free wifi.


We decided on lunch back at the camp and then to do wine tasting in the afternoon at the Coonawarra.

Three wineries were on our list - Wynn's, Brands Laira and Rymill.

We loved Wynn's and enjoyed the wines but laughed at the sense of "fairy godmother's cottage from Shrek 2" - cute old buildings at the front with what looks like a big factory behind! It was great to see the original buildings that has featured on the labels for more than 60 years. We bought a 2 pack of "Gables" red which was on special and cellar door only. One of the bottles will go nicely with Thai dinner tonight.

A charming lady served us and took our picture (not well but good intentions).

Then on to Brands Laira. This was a bit disappointing and nothing cellar door only. Even some flagship Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon from 2004 / 2005 was not really that good. No photo.

Rymill was more modern but also very nice and we were served by a Swedish lady from Varberg, who met an Aussie man in London and moved here 13 years ago (they now live here in Naracoorte). Good wine tasting, a few tales about Sweden and despite the fact we now have a bag full to keep us going whilst at the Grampians, we had to buy the MC2 wine (an interesting play on words for its grapes; merlot, cab franc and cab sav) which was very drinkable.

Lovely drive up to Rymill's cellar door...

Our wine bag stash...

Several times on the road we passed a site with some chainsaw carvings of old trees so this time we stopped to see what it was all about. It was a tribute to Father John Woods who co-founded the schools with Mary Mackillop and also was a noted scientist and by the sounds of it overall good bloke. The carvings were a tribute to how much he loved the area, the bush and we thought they were well done as a relevant tribute to him.

Back to the caravan park for a few hours of down time (it's amazing how wine tasting wears you out!) then on to Thai for dinner at 7pm. We are seriously missing Asian flavours and spice.

Well, we arrived at the Thai place around 7pm. Lots of takeaway orders in front of the middle aged caucasian woman who doubled as a waitress. We had to wait as she was accepting yet more orders over the phone.

We ordered our dishes and then... waited... and waited. It took some 40 minutes for our shared entree of Thai fishcakes to arrive. Then... yep, waited... and waited... until our mains arrived some 40 minutes later again, only for a stuff up to have happened when the satay chicken only arrived as... satay, with no chicken in sight.

The place was filling up and you could see lots of hungry people continuously glance towards the kitchen, as unimpressed as we were.

Anyway, the food was generally pretty good, but no way we would ever come here again.

We walked back in the dark to the campground some time after 9pm. A cop car pulled over some unfortunate bugger just in front of us, with the cop car's blue and red lights flashing over an otherwise almost dark neighborhood.

Good night!

 

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