We passed rather a cold night. I do not think I have brought sufficient warm clothes with me, and may well have to buy more if cold weather persists. Our bed was supplied with electric blankets, and I made use of mine last night, so at least I passed a warm night. In the morning, I dressed again in long-sleeved shirt on top of short-sleeved shirt, topped by my fleece, but still was not exactly warm. I have only one jumper with me, and am told that the temperature in Adelaide today will reach 17 degrees - probably more jumpers will be necessary. Our bodies, which 2 days ago were suffering the heat of 37 degrees must now contend with 17 degrees (and a lot less at night.)
The rain fell merrily as we breakfasted, so I determined not to walk. When we arrived at the foot of the walk, The Dutchman's Stern, the sun was shining weakly, so everybody but me elected to walk, in spite of the threatening clouds. A number of extremely sharp showers of heavy rain while I was sitting quietly reading in the bus made me glad I had decided to stay inside.
The walkers returned somewhat wet, so it was decided to return to the Mill for hot showers and to make lunch. While the lunch was being made, I found a few minutes to walk round and find out a bit about the mill, which is quite picturesque.
It was built in 1879 by somebody who owned a lot of mills, but I was not able to find out whether it was driven by wind or water, and it has been extensively altered since it went out of use so it was hard to work out.
After lunch, we set off on the 4 1/2 hour trip to Adelaide. For some reason I fell asleep - I don't usually sleep in the bus, I am too interested in looking for wildlife, and there have been a lot of wild grey kangaroos and emus to spot amongst the rather grey scrub. So I fell asleep in Australia, surrounded by scrub and kangaroos and woke up about 90 minutes later to find it looked as if I were in the south of England! I was surrounded by green rolling hills and lots of sheep and English looking cows - we had rather got used to the hump-backed Brahma type cattle, so ordinary ones were quite a shock.
However, it soon became apparent we weren't in England - if the rather different looking trees weren't sufficient, it was the large number of vineyards and wineries. We were in the Clare valley, which centres on the town of Clare. We made a brief refuelling stop and were offered a winery tour and wine tasting, but nobody was interested in going, not even Paul, so we pressed on to Adelaide.
As we neared Adelaide, we found ourselves on a dual carriageway, the first we have seem since Brisbane I think, and it was not long until we were driving around Adelaide, where we said farewell to most of our bus, who were not taking the next bit of the tour.
A quick walk round Adelaide before we got started on the huge pile of laundry revealed some interesting old buildings.
Many of the shops are shaded like this to protect people from the heat. We needed protecting from the cold this time though, the wind is very cold and I thought longingly of last night's electric blanket.
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