Adelaide Hills

Thursday 13th August 2009
It was a sad event this morning when I put on my long trousers after nearly three months in shorts. Althoug the morning in Port Augusta wasn't really cold, we woke to an overcast sky and we knew we'd reach the cold weather today.
As soon as we left Port Augusta on the way South we noticed a significant change in the surrounding landscape with lush green paddocks and tall trees.
Later on in the day Frank informed me that we crossed Goyder's Line. The rainfall on the Northern part of this line is 250mm / year less than to the South.
Just to prove that this line realy exists we experienced our first lot of rainfall since crossing the Nullabor nearly 3 month ago.
We went through Crystal Brook and through the Clare Valley into the Adelaide Hills. What a sight to go from the red and dry desert yesterday to the green Adelaide Hills which were shrouded in a mist of low cloud with showers every few kilometers.
Today's travel really brought home the diversity of the Australian landscape and how dramatically it can change within a day's driving.
We stopped at Springton, near the Herbig Tree, and had our lunch before continuing on to Lobethal where we called into the famous Bakery before continuing onto Balhannah where we arrived at Frank and Irene's place around 1:30pm.
This time around we had to put our caravan on the concrete as the grass was too soft after the good winter rains.
By the time we finished our cuppa and headed of for a quick trip to Hahndorf the clouds had almost disappeared and we enjoyed sitting in the sun outside the shops while Irene, Ilse and Andrea checked out a few shops.
On the way home we ordered Pizza which Frank picked up later on for dinner and I made some Bread & Butter Pudding for dessert. We spent the evening looking at a few holiday shots before retiring to bed on one of our coldest nights in a long time.