Clare Valley Wineries and Cats!

 After a day at the races on the Saturday, we spent Easter Sunday visiting local wineries.  



As you can see, one of the wineries was full of cats - one was even in the sink.  Apparently the sink was above the heater so the cat liked the warmth.  The one outside on the boxes looks just like my Tigger at home.


I love hearing how some of the wines got their names.  At this particular winery, one of the wines was called 'Big Fine Girl' because the person who founded the winery wrote home to Scotland to say he wouldn't be home because he'd 'Met a big fine girl'!

Camping in The Clare Valley

Wow!  Banbury Cakes for sale in Clare, SA!!!!

 What a wonderful experience - camping in Australia.  The weather was pretty similar to August in Cornwall.  We had some rain but mostly at night.

 
 A lovely way to spend the Easter weekend, chopping wood and sitting around a campfire telling stories and singing songs badly (sorry fellow campers!)

St Patrick's Day

 

 St Patrick's day is huge over here, we had great fun!  There was Irish dancing aplenty and of course heaps of green.  Finding someone amongst the green mass was pretty difficult!

 

KI Day 3, Part 2

 Seal Bay on KI was gorgeous.  It was so awesome to watch the seals frolicking in the waves.  They were coming in on the waves and swimming back out again - so cute!

Homeward bound with beautiful views and yet another beautiful sunset!  I do love Australia!

KI Day 3

 

 Caves today!  We saw a large cave that had been discovered by someone falling through the roof!  The candle was to show us how most of the rest of the caves had been discovered by explorers, not much light given off by the odd candle.  One guy had got lost and was luckily found a few hours after his candle had ran out!

 We also saw bright red parrots in the trees - awesome!

 We went to a beautiful beach and not having bathers with me wasn't going to stop be getting in the sea, even did a bit of body surfing!  What fun it was, and such a beautiful day!

KI Day 2, Part 2

 The views on the way down to Admirals Arch were stunning.  There were seals playing on the rocks and the sky was a beautiful blue!  Our group leader told us about a time when he had been down on the rocks (when you were permitted) when a freak wave washed onto the rocks.  Luckily, he managed to slip into a cave and hang on.  All the seals were washed from the rocks and the whole scene was watched by his wife and in-laws who thought he'd been swept out to sea!


After Admirals Arch, we headed for a swim. The sea looked beautiful but was a little chilly so I decided to paddle at this beach.  The water was really clear but quite seaweady at the shore. There were some snorkelers out to sea with spears and they came up to the beach with heaps of fish that they'd caught.

KI Day 2

 After a warm night in a local school, sleeping in bunkbeads, we headed off exploring.  The first thing we came across was a wild koala, sitting at the bottom of a tree right next to a car park.  He was just sitting and staring at all the onlookers and eventually decided we were being   too noisy and headed on up the tree.   We headed down the coast towards Remarkable Rocks and we could have been in Cornwall.  It was very cloudy but incredibly warm - about 28 degrees.  The views were all just like the Cornish coastal ones except there were far less people.

 Once we got to Remarkable Rocks, we explored, taking heed of the notices warning us not to go over certain parts of them.  There'd be no chance of me risking life and limb for a better view!   Once again, the views reminded me of the Cornish coast.

 

The rocks were huge, too huge for me to climb most of them but some people had great fun climbing and jumping off.

 The views were amazing and it was really interesting to discover that KI was the place the Cook first discovered and he mistakenly thought it was the mainland.  KI is the second largest island off the coast of Australia.

KI Day 1, Part 3

 As you can see, we visited the KI wildlife sanctuary where all the animals are rescue animals.  It is illeagal in South Australia to release rescued animals back into the wild.  We even saw a koala high up in one of the treet - possibly a wild one who had chosen to make his home at the sanctuary,

 There were lots of animals to get upclose and personal with.  Some of the kangaroos were a little over friendly with one another which seems to be a bit of a theme here!

  
 

As you can see, the animals were very friendly and the baby joey was sooo cute!