Petersontravels

Our next adventure was on Kangaroo Island, just south of Adelaide.  We took a short 40 minute flight to the island from Adelaide Airport.  The island looks quite parched from the current drought.

Welcome to the island!

Several of the people on our flight were headed to the same place.  There were at least two vans to take us to our destination for the next three days, Southern Ocean Lodge.  Here is our first view of the lobby area.  It’s going to be a rough few days!

The views from the dining area are incredible!

As are the views from our room!  Pretty much every room here mirrors this view, while still maintaining privacy for everybody.  Excellent design!

This is the view up the coast from our private deck.  Like I said, it’s going to be rough living here for a few days!

After a delicious lunch we took a short hike along the cliffs west of the lodge.

These views are going to ruin the rest of the trip for us.

Stunning coastline around every corner!

I just hope that anybody who is lucky enough to stay here realizes how special this place is!

The surf was absolutely pounding this little island.

While it’s hard to see (which is by design) that’s the Southern Ocean Lodge above the small beach.  This place burned to the ground in 2020, right before the Covid shutdowns, and just reopened last year, so everything is brand spanking new.

While this place is expensive, with excellent food, open bar and exclusive views like this, it’s worth every penny!

Sunset during dinner that night!  I love the clouds reflecting off the ocean.

The next morning we had an excursion to see Australian Sea Lions at Seal Bay.  With Southern Ocean Lodge, every excursion is included.  It’s rather like a high end cruise experience!  We loaded up into the van and made our way 40 minutes to the east.

The Australian Sea Lions are a specific species that became endangered due to fur hunters.  The biggest risk posed to them these days is becoming entangled in seine nets and plastic debris.

Seal Bay on Kangaroo Island is home to their third largest breeding colony.  We had a private tour set up by Southern Ocean Lodge and this was the first guy we saw off the trail, quite a ways from the beach.

Closer to the surf you could see these marks that the sea lions make when they move across the sand.

Right in front of the steps to the beach were several sea lions.  They are quite used to people walking around their habitat.

They all seemed quite happy with their surroundings.  They have a cycle where they spend three days hunting for food, then three days resting on the beach.  Their hunting grounds are up to 60 miles from shore, and down to 100 yards deep.

The beach is pretty stunning, but it’s heavily protected to keep people from getting too close to the sea lions.  The beach is only open to guided tours.

As we were heading back from the beach we saw this sea-lion making its way towards the water.

On our way back to Southern Ocean Lodge our guide stopped at a little spot on the side of the road that is known for Koalas!  We had yet to see one of these cuties.  Well now we have!

There were at least 10 of them spread amongst maybe 5 trees.  This was a momma koala and baby, posing for us.

Another momma/baby set was on this tree basically performing a high-wire act.  I was almost sure one or both of them would fall!

After an excellent lunch (even their burgers are great) we had another excursion to Kelly Hill Caves.  Only about 10 minutes from the lodge, the caves here are about to celebrate 100 years of being open to the public, having first opened in 1926.  We hiked down into the cave and the first room was filled with stalactites!  The rock lit up by a flashlight on the left is pure calcium carbonate, the material these stalactites are made of.

Our guide pointed out this stalactite that she referred to as The Ballerina.  Pretty appropriate!

One factor from these old caves being explored extensively before is that so many hands have touched so many features that they are basically ruined forever, so I was surprised to see several perfectly preserved cave features in crystal white.

This little section of stalactites was impressive!  Thousands of years to create this!

The final chamber we visited was just filled with stalactites and stalagmites!  They had a 15 minutes audio-visual interlude here that really wasn’t necessary, but it would be great for the kiddos!

Our guide referred to this little stalagmite as the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  You’ll get it if you are a geek.

Before we exited the caves our guide let us know about this special stalactites.  These are actually calcium carbonate that has formed around plant roots that made their way into the cave from above.

One last look at that little island off the coast getting battered by the waves.  I just thought the sunset light on this one made it blog worthy!

Coming up, we have one more day at Southern Ocean Lodge!

 

We caught a flight from Sydney to Adelaide on Qantas, and we have to say it was one of the more enjoyable flights we have taken.  The onboard food was excellent, and the Barossa Valley wines they poured were a sign of good things to come.  I was able to catch a nice shot of Adelaide as the plane approached the airport.  We opted to stay in wine country versus the city, so this is as close to the city as we’ll get on this trip.

The entire flight was seamless, including picking up our rental car and heading out of Adelaide and traveling north to the Barossa Valley wine region, where we are staying for the next 3 nights.  Our hotel is called The Louise, and it’s a little bit of heaven on earth!  It was a warm day so we decided to take a dip in their stunning pool, set among the vineyards.

This view would never get old.

Meals are included with your room at The Louise.  Just outside the dining room is this inviting deck.

Gorgeous views in every direction.

We had some visitors show up near the deck.  This was our first sighting of kangaroo’s!

I think they like all the attention they received!  The whole dining room was excited to see them just outside the windows.

I swear these two were literally posing for us!

On our first full day in the Barossa we drove about 20 minutes to Henschke winery, considered one of the best in Australia.  We had signed up for their most expensive tasting ($420 USD for two of us) which includes a taste of their most expensive wine, “Hill of Grace” ($600+ USD/bottle).

The Henschke family has owned their land for Six Generations!  Our guide Kyra gave us all the details of their German family history.

Before trying any wines we hopped in the back of an SUV and took a ride out to the Hill of Grace vineyard, which is steeped in history.  Adjacent to the vineyard are the ruins of an 1850’s building that served as a school and then a Post Office, before it was shut down in 1870.

The first vines at Hill of Grace were planted in 1860, the first year that construction started on the Lutheran Church directly adjacent to the vineyard.  The church is still active today.

This row of vines are the initial plantings from 1860!  These are on original French root-stock, as they’ve never had an issue with phylloxera here.  Kyra actually had us step into containers lined with chlorine before entering the vineyard to make sure we didn’t have any contaminants on our shoes.

As we were walking the rows of vines we saw this kangaroo hiding in the shade.  Apparently this is quite common.

Here is some recently picked Shiraz from the Hill of Grace, fermenting away in the cement vat.  It smelled incredible!

The lineup of glasses for our upcoming tasting.

We tasted through about seven wines, with the last one being the $600+ Hill of Grace.  It was quite good, but I’ve gotta say as a wine person I’ve yet to find a wine that I’d say “I’d pay $600+ for that!”

As much as I wanted to love these wines, particularly with the impressive history, I wasn’t really into them.  Some of them were good, but none of them were great, with the possible exception of the Hill of Grace, which is just stupidly expensive.  Needless to say, we didn’t end up buying any.

Our next stop was Penfolds, one of the most famous wineries in Australia.  We had a wonderful host named Krysten, who was full of excellent information and  had a great bubbly personality.  Here is the list of wines we were going to taste as part of their Ultimate Tasting.

As has been the norm here in the Barossa Valley, we started with something not on their list, an actual Champagne that Penfolds has made for them in Reims, France (so they can legit call it Champagne).  It was really good!

For another $50 Australian ($32 US) you could get a taste of their most expensive wine, the Grange.  This is another ridiculously expensive $600+ USD wine!  Nice to try for $32, no way I’m buying it!

Krysten also opened two Tawny “Ports” (they can’t call it that, but that’s what it is), and even though  the 30 year old Port was older, the 20 year Port was the winner!  We didn’t try the 50 year old Port, which is stupendously ridiculous at $3500 Australian dollars per bottle!!

At The Louise nightly happy hour they had this Murdoch Hill Sauvignon Blanc open, and it tasted exactly like Duckhorn SB.  In other words, really fricking good!  Yes, I had more than one glass!

The next morning the skies had changed dramatically.  Rain was in the forecast, and the locals were all excited for it, as they are in the middle of a major drought.

Our wine excursion for today was The Grenache Project at a tasting room called Artisans of Barossa.  This project has six winemakers from different wineries who all get fruit from the same vineyard picked on the same day at the same time, and they try to make the best wine they can from it.

Here is our excellent host Jonathan explaining the project.  The wines definitely had some very distinct differences.

In the end none of them were worthy of purchase, but one of them impressed us enough we wanted to try a couple of wines from the same winemaker.  The Meta Grenache Blanc from Schwarz was excellent!

As was the 2021 “The Schiller” Shiraz!  We ended up buying a mixed 6-pack and had it shipped to our final hotel in Brisbane, so we don’t have to carry it around Australia with us.  Shipping it straight home was going to be more than $20 USD/bottle, while shipping to Brisbane was free!

Based on Jonathan’s recommendation we then drove a short distance to a winery called Pindarie for lunch.

While their wines are just ok, they are mostly known for their food and the views!

I found it interesting to see the color differential between the vineyards, with one varietal staying green while the others are well into their fall colors.

We decided to stop wine tasting as we had tasted at least a dozen at Artisan’s, so we made our way to the nearby Kaiserstuhl Conservation Park for a short hike.  The weather was perfect.

The short Stringybark loop takes you through some dense bush with the opportunity to see kangaroos.

The environment here is very reminiscent of what I expected Australian bush to look like!

This kangaroo was hiding in the shade of some of the bushes just off the trail.  I barely spotted him.

More views from the bush!

We were the only ones on the trail, so it was pretty quiet outside of the constant squawking of various birds.

Kim spotted this little guy on the trail ahead of us.  This cutie with the big nose and rough edges is an Echidna.

I took a short video of him approaching us and then thinking better of it.

As we were finishing the hike we saw plenty of kangaroo’s, and they were all watching us.

On our way back to the hotel we passed this lookout over the Barossa Valley.  The area below the lookout was filled with what appeared to be modern art statues.

The eagle was pretty cool.  The sky was amazing!

During our last night’s dinner I had to run outside and get a shot of this perfect sunset.

One last look from the rear deck of The Louise.  Beautiful spot, and I definitely recommend it if you are coming to the Barossa Valley!  It’s not cheap, but it’s perfectly located, includes breakfast and dinner, as well as all the wine you can drink!

Coming up, we take a short flight from Adelaide to nearby Kangaroo Island.