On the road – Gundaroo to Adelaide

Despite the very long day of driving from Gundaroo to Mildura, we have both thoroughly enjoyed the journey as we’ve travelled westwards. The transitions of landscape have been fascinating and beautiful….

From the rolling green lushness around Canberra, very European and bucolic with rows of trees framing paddocks. Towards Temora colours turn to brown with sparser trees and scrub, though it is still surprisingly green. The spectacularly flat yellow/brown moonscape of the Hay Plains around Balranald, where for kilometres you can see to the horizon in every direction and you feel the enormity of the sky. The earth turns reddish approaching Mildura, and as you leave that river town low yellow fields roll to the edge of vision, dotted only occasionally by a clutter of trees. Near Renmark we stopped for spectacular views of a bend in the Murray River, looking more like the African savannah than the Australian bush. Over the hill to the Barossa Valley, once more into lush greenness and rolling vines.

We stopped in the Barossa for a couple of tastings, of course, picking up a superb 2000 old vine grenache at Kaesler ($35). Then through the suburbs to Adelaide city for the next stop on our food odyssey: Cheong Liew’s The Grange.