From balmy Queensland, on the 14th we headed south to Melbourne to do some more adventuring around Australia. Brandon and I stayed in Melbourne for a night, checked out the city and the Queen Victoria Street markets. The market is incredible; a huge open air roofed market where different vendors sell anything from fresh produce to digeridoos! Very neat place to go when you're in Melbourne, there is so much to see and you can easily spend a couple hours wandering around. The market runs several days each week, and operates year round. We picked up some fresh fruit and veggies while we were there, and I was amazed at the selection. Super neat place.
We decided to rent a car in Melbourne and begin a little road trip to Adelaide. It's a fair distance in between the two cities, and we got to see a good portion of Victoria and South Australia. We stopped for the night and stayed with Kelsey Suttie, a friend from university who works for Bayer CropScience parent seed production in Mt. Gambier. The next morning, we met Kelsey at the Bayer offices and met some of the staff as well as the other Canadians working there, Giselle Ulrich and Andrew Reese. It was pretty awesome to see the Aussie side of the parent seed production, and the beginning of product that I will be selling down the road!
On our way to Adelaide, we went to the South Australia Field Days in Lucinda with Kelsey, Andrew and Giselle. Similar to our Crop Production Show or Farm Progess show, the field days showcased equipment dealers, new innovations, seed and fertilizer companies, booths for beef and sheep breeds and other farming related booths. It was amazing to see the amount of Canadian designed equipment over there, namely Bourgault and Seed Hawk. I'd never seen a Bourgault tank with a kangaroo on it before! Pretty cool.
After the farm show, we headed north to Adelaide. Adelaide is a beautiful city, with lots of green space. You can tell driving in that it is very well planned, as most of it is laid out in a grid, making it easy to navigate. One way streets were a bit of an issue for Brandon and I when we got into the CBD where we stayed, but after a couple "light" arguments we figured it out. Our first night there, we checked out the Chinatown and the Central Markets, which were really busy on Friday night. Similar to the markets in Melbourne, you could buy all sorts of things at the Central Markets, and there are tons of great Chinese places to eat at!
On Saturday morning we woke up bright and early to spend the day doing one of my favorite things: drinking wine. We made our way out of Adelaide to the Barossa Valley and hit up six wineries for tastings: Wolf Blass, Penfolds, Saltram, Chateau Tanunda, Peter Lehmann and Jacob's Creek. Because I was driving, I had to lay off the sauce and merely taste and spit out the wine, however I think Brandon was quite wasted by the time we were done for the afternoon.
The Barossa Valley is quite a good place to grow Shiraz grapes, we were told by a lovely hostess at Wolf Blass, and we ended up trying quite a few excellent Shiraz wines throughout the day. Most of the wineries were really good at giving you a background on each wine, especially what each year was like and explaining the differences between the vintages. Needless to say, we had an excellent time, and I purchased a few too many bottles of wine - some of which I am praying will survive the long flight home!
March is festival month in Adelaide, and we were lucky to catch the end of the Fringe Festival - a comedy festival that runs in conjunction with the Adelaide Festival. The Fringe is held in a park at the end of Rundle St, which they name "The Garden of Unearthly Delights" for the festival. Pretty neat to walk around, lots of different types of acts playing in different tents all over the park. We grabbed a couple beer and some food and went to see a Canadian comedian, Mike Wilmot, in a tent called the Hunting Lodge. I'm pretty sure at one point when he mentioned CBC, we were the only ones in the audience who really understood what he was making fun of.
To end the night, we met up with Jill Mackenzie, a sister of one of my co-workers, at a pub on Rundle Street. Jill has lived in Adelaide for seven years, and had given us a list of things to do while we were in the city. It was so great to meet up with a fellow Saskatchewanian, and when her husband showed up to have a beer with us as well, we laughed about the very Canadian things we say (such as loonie and bunny hug). Again, in my travels I have been fortunate to meet some more amazing people!
Sunday morning was a little slower than usual, being post-St. Patty's day, after all. We hung out at Glenelg Beach for a couple hours before hitting the road again, to drive back to Mt. Gambier through the Naracoorte and Coonawarra wine country. We had originally planned on making it in time to get in some tastings, however after an hour and a half taking the scenic route out of Adelaide, we ended up getting down there too late at night and missed out. We stayed the night at Kelsey's again, and headed to drive the Great Ocean Road on Monday.
The Great Ocean road was dope. Some of the most gorgeous views I've seen so far in Australia, and we had a beautiful, sunny, +30 degree day. The limestone coast is really fascinating, and constantly changing. The road starts at the town of Nullawarre and ends in Torquay, a super cool little surf town. There are tons of places to stop off and check out the limestone formations on the coast, and the most famous of all of them is the Twelve Apostles. The impossibility of the formations make them fascinating, and the scenery is breathtaking. They are beautiful, but some of the other (less tourist infested) stops were even more incredible. My favorite stops were the Grotto and the Loch Ard Gorge. My pictures are fantastic!
After driving for about 13 hours, we ended up back in Melbourne, where we stayed in St. Kilda at a really nice hostel called Habitat HQ. Our last day in Melbourne we spent touring around the city and visiting some shops, as well as a couple hours at St. Kilda beach. We met up with my friend Matt, who I had met on the Kiwi Experience bus, and partied in St. Kilda until wee hours in the morning.
Next up: heading to New South Wales to chill out in Sydney for a week until I fly back to Saskatchewan!
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