Tasting at the Tasty Cube. The d'Arenburg winery.

The Cube is stunning!

What an incredible feat of imagination not to mention construction and implementation.
Probably people told him he was crazy! Why bother? It doesn't suit...

But what a vision!
And you know what?

It works!

On average 1000 people visit every day.
It is open every day, and the weekends are understandably busy.
If I were you I'd go early on a Tuesday.

The cube was imagined by the winemaker at d'Arenburg winery - Chester Osborn.
Yeah, it's a funky Rubic's cube and inside is just as funky.

There's a room where you can smell all the aromas of wine.

The smells are in glass flasks attached to old bike handlebars operated with bike horns.

There is an art collection.

 You have to see the toilets!

 It's a bit hard to see but the circles are mirrors.

The tasting room is on the top floor.

It was very busy, but we felt well attended to.

The wine names are as quirky as you would expect.

There were a lot of these bright chairs. Love!

I can see your caravan from here!

You can buy a single version of this chair made out of old wine barrels.

You can find The Cube at the d'Arenburg Vineyard, Osborn Road, Mclaren Vale, South Australia.
It's open every day 10am - 5pm.
Costs $10 pp to get in including wine tasting.

Getting to Kangaroo Island.

Thursday. We left Lake Bonney, getting out through a short sandy patch OK and headed for Adelaide.
Stopped en route at to empty the toilet tank and had a nice view of the Murray River from a lookout in Waikerie.

Morning tea was at pretty Sedan, at a travellers rest stop in town near the 6-way intersection.

Then we climbed the steepest hill so far to get over the Adelaide Hills, and the landscape changed dramatically.

Much more vegetation on the west side of the hills.
Soon we were at Blackwood at the home of L and P who we met this time last year leaving Dubrovnik, and then againin Kotor, and unexpectedly in Theth in the Accursed Mountains in Albania.
They so kindly put us up for 2 nights and we had great chats and much food and drink.

On Friday, G and I went into Adelaide on the train. The station is 3 minutes walk from our friends'.
So convenient.
I don't remember much about Adelaide from 30 years ago, but I remember the market!
And this time it didn't disappoint.
But first we had coffee, chai and cake at Handsome and the Duchess, tucked away down an alley, we'd never have found it by ourselves.
Thanks goodness for Beanhunter!

I also managed to pick up a couple of books from the second hand book shops there.
It was a good job G carried my backpack as it was quickly filled.
We also had lunch in the market at a cafe at the side.

The G and I went our separate ways - I toddled off to the Jam Factory. Gorgeous art space.
And then at the other end of town, Have You Met Charlie, Relove and Urban Cow all with interesting handmade goodies.

G wandered through some of the fine old sandstone buildings, like the court house and such and the museum, where he caught up with the Australian Geographic photographic exhibition, the one A and I had seen in Sydney a few weeks back.

After a cuppa at Madam Hanoi next to the station we were fortified enough to take the train back into the hills.

Saturday morning was an early start, we left L and P's at 7am and made it to Cape Jervis in plenty of time to get the ferry to Kangaroo Island. In fact the previous ferry was still loading! So we had time to make a cuppa before we set sail - one of the advantages of having a kitchen on board

G wisely handed over the reversing of the caravan onto the ferry to the loading guys. He made it look easy!

But that was nothing compared to a B-double full of sheep reversing onto the boat.

And just like that - three quarters of an hour later we reach Kangaroo Island.

On the Road to Kangaroo Island: Day 3

 Lots of rain overnight in Goolgowi but we woke to a pretty sunrise.

The mornings drive took us across the Hay Plain which is notoriously flat.

Last time we travelled this way, on the way back from Western Australia there had been a lot of rain and in places water lapped at the road.

Not today!

Although it wasn't as dry as it has been.

 

The number of trucks on the road is noticeably huge!

May hay trucks heading east. From? Western Australia?

Morning tea and lunch: rest areas on the Sturt Highway.

Big thunderstorms around Balranald but we missed the worst of them.

There is a quarantine checkpoint near the Victoria/South Australia border and they are very strict.

I had cooked and frozen our remaining onions, capsicum and squeezed and frozen lemon juice, eaten all the rest of the fruit.

This is to prevent to transmission of fruit fly into South Australia.

They went into the caravan to check that we weren't hiding any forbidden fruits and veggies.

We topped up our shopping in Renmark and also gained half an hour of time!

Got to camp at Lake Bonney at 4pm. Camped right on the edge of the lake. There are 3 other caravans here and a car.

We remembered that we had been here before - just stopped for lunch and a guy in a caravan wandered over and we couldn't get rid of him!

It is quite windy and the water is lapping against the shore.