Adelaide the beginning

Time for us to stop again and refill the bank accounts.  We had a bit of trouble agreeing on where to stop this time.  And Mark won..... happens occasionally.  We lived in Adelaide 12 years ago and Mark loved it, me not as much. Its a great city, for a city, but I am just not a big city girl I guess.  Mark lined up a job through his old work colleague and is on afternoon shift Mon - Fri and morning shift on Saturday.  Then the plan is for Sunday to be family day.  We are not sure how long we will stay depends how much we like it here.
We are staying near North Adelaide at Levi Caravan Park.  Its a really nice bushy green and quiet park.  Right on the banks of the Torrens river, which has great bike tracks and parks.  Everything is nice and close and handy which helps.

Home sweet home

kids favourite playground

Our friends Leanne, Ronnie, and there twins Chelsea and Alesha live in Adelaide.  We met them in 2011 at Mission Beach when they had almost finished their trip around Australia.  Its been great to see these guys again.  We went down to their family shack at Moana for Australia day, which was a beautiful sunny day. 

And of course the most important thing.  The kids are back at school!!! Yah yah I needed a break after teaching them all of last year.  But mostly they needed to go to real school again to socialise and to remember what its all about.  They have settled in wonderfully well.  Its now week 6 and they are loving it.  Charlotte has two good friends Oriana and Charli.  Jake started off with a friend called Logan, but that soon ended when he accidentally head butted Jake and made his nose bleed, little bugger can be a little unforgiving!!  He now has his new best friend Archer and that seems to be going smoothly.  This week the kids have learn to swim, which they can already thanks to swimming so much in Townsville and Alice but will be good to train them a bit more.

We are trying to still see as much as we can while we are in Adelaide.  We went to the Santos Tour Down under bike race.  Had a great afternoon watching the race.  The highlight for the kids was at the ended when they were handing our free drink bottles to the crowd!!  Of course we got a couple.  I think Mark almost threw Jake over the crowd in his excitement to get one!!!

I took this photo one nights, its pretty typical of what happens sometimes.  We don't have a lounge or anything so our bed ends up being the play area.  I love this photo :)

 

 

We've been lucky to have met some fabulous families on this trip.  And even luckier they have all basically travelled the same path as us.  But they are all heading west, but we are stopping for a while.  But that also meant we got a visit from them all.  So the Beesons, the Cronans and the Ellis families all spent a couple of days with us, at different times.  We had a great time catching up and enjoying Adelaide.  These guys have all headed across the Nullabor, and I am hating all the beautiful photos they keep posting on Face book, great for them, we will be there soon hopefully!! 

 

 

Out for the day at Harndorf with the Beesons



Cronan kids walking Jake and Charlotte to school

Enjoying a afternoon at the beach with the Ellis family.

 

Umm what else have we done.... Mark went to Clipsal car race and had a ball.  Saw the Angels, Kiss and Motley Crew.  The kids and I stayed home, I'd rather have my teeth pulled than go!!  We have caught up with my Auntie Trudy and cousin Courtney again, which was lovely.  Auntie Trudy even dragged me on a 20km bike ride.  I made it just, but then today I got stubborn and rode 28km.  Which for me is pretty huge!  We went to the night markets and have spent a couple of lovely days at the beach.

 

So we are now about half way thought our time here.  We have settled into a pretty good routine now.  I was a little worried about being here and Mark wanting to stay forever, but I have put my foot down and emphatically stated I do not want to live in the city.  Marks job is OK, but he's not loving it.  He gets on really well with is boss, but some of the other guys leave a bit to be desired!  He's pretty much on the count down now until we leave.

But the exciting thing is that next week Beth and Ruth arrive (Marks Mum and sister) then a week after they leave my parents and sister arrive.  So our last bit of time here should also be fun.

Yorke Penninsular

After Mark fixed the Landcruiser we left Adelaide for the Yorke Peninsular. We had about a week before we needed to be back for work and school. We drove straight down to the tip of the Peninsular to Innes National Park.
We set up camp at Pandolowie Camp Ground for the next three nights. Pretty quiet down there, considering it was mid January, barely anyone else camping at all.

We went for a walk that arvo to the beach just near us. Too cold to swim but had a lovely walk. There was even a cool looking boat wreck on the beach. And lots of surfers, it's supposed a top spot for that. Not that we'd know, having never done it, but that's what we heard!

The next day we got up early and headed to the Stenhouse Bay Jetty for a bit of fishing. No luck though. I left Mark and the kids too it and headed for a walk around the headland. Such beautiful rugged coast line here, the views were amazing. If a little cold and windy!! We also had a drive around the area, checking out the sights. Then back to the van for some quiet time.

The next day was fabulous, my favourite by far. It was a beautiful sunny warm day and we basically spent it at the beach. We went to a few different beaches,Browns beach, Shell beach and Marion Bay. And they were all pretty beautiful.  The ocean got a little rough in a couple of spots. It was just one of those great days. Exactly why we did this trip, to have fun in nature as a family.

pretty nice heh!

The next day and the beautiful warm weather had gone, back was the wind!  We went and checked out the scenery and lighthouse.  Then went to an old town called Inneston and had a look around.  We enjoyed that, kids liked running and checking out the old buildings.  Until we stumbled into one that had been rented out as a holiday hut, but we didn't realise, oops.  Charlotte was not impressed!

We also went to Ethel beach as Mark wanted to see the ship wreck.  It was a beautiful experience, (not).  It blew a gale, there were a thousand stairs (well maybe not that many) then the wreck was basically all washed away!!  Someone was a little disappointed.  The windy kept up so we drove to Marion Bay and had a drink at the pub.

beautiful coast line

Inneston old town

old tennis courts

the ship wreck, or lack there of....

So we finished our time at Innes and planned to gradually head back to Adelaide.  We were hoping for some nice beaches and a decrease in the wind.  We basically wanted to chill out for a few days.  So we decided to go to Edithburg, not sure why but we thought it would be sheltered.  Well when we arrived the caravan park was right next to the biggest wind farm in South Australia.  What did that tell us, yep it was windy, the whole time we were there.  We stayed two nights, not sure why but we did.  We went out for lunch, did some fishing, kids did some ceramic craft and had a look at the museum.  Its a nice enough little town, but more suited to fisher people with boats.  There is a really cool looking ocean pool, but alas the weather gods did not look favourably on us! The museum was very cute and old.  It had all these had written signs about the area, and cost a whole $6 to go!  Umm not sure what else to say, other than I was glad to leave.

We decided to go to Moonta for a few days.  So we stopped to look at Ardrossan for lunch.

Charlotte's the horse!

We had been told by some friends about a cheap camp in Moonta.  So we rang the number and arranged to stay on this old guys property.  Well we assumed it was acreage or something, but alas no.  He had a town block, internal though.  And we ended up parked in front of his shed...... we can laugh about it now.  It was cheap $5....... Ummmmm at least old Graeme was a nice bloke.  The first night Mark got stuck talking to him for ages, we even got a tour of his shed.  Then the next morning at 7am he was calling in our window to see if we wanted to hook up water.  Heart of gold but weird when we were strangers.  Add that to the list of strange things we have done on this trip.

We ended up having a smashing time in Moonta.  We spent a lot of time fishing, didn't catch fish or squid  but we did net some blue swimmer crab.  The sound of absolute delight and excitement from the kids was priceless!  We went late one night and caught a couple of beauties.  I have this vision of mark moaning in delight as he inhaled the tasty crabs!  We managed to score one warm, and not windy morning and had a swim in the ocean swim enclosure.  We all had fun jumping of the pontoon.

Yah this blog is done!!!!! I left it too late, its now months since we were at the Yorke Peninsular and I was a little lack lustre writing this one sorry.  Will hope to improve next time.  Overall the Peninsular was good, but we made a poor choice on where to stay and the wind drove us batty.  Now we are back in Adelaide, bring on school and work.