Cutlers Cruz Aus: Hahndorf, Adelaide, Victor Harbour, Port Augusta

On our way to Adelaide we had to call into the Big Lobster, how often do you see one that's about 10metres high.

Not far from Adelaide we found the turn to the popular Hahndorf, a German town. I only wanted to go there because I heard it had a chocolate factory nearby and to find it sold German sausages was a real bonus. But not eating them at the same time of course. The buildings were just beautiful and the town was very busy when we were there. We found the information centre to find out where this chocolate factory was as it was getting late. It was actually at another little town so with sadness I said maybe we should come back tomorrow.

When we arrived at our Adelaide caravan park, which was called Levi Park, we were suprised to see sooo many caravans. The whole way around Aus so far the parks have been very quite and we could pretty much can choose any spot we wanted. This one had cars and vans on everybit of vacant ground. Thinking a little bit more about Adelaide, I guess this is the point where people stop before they go up to the desert (NT) or over the desert to WA or even the desert of SA.

We didnt really look around Adelaide as when you have seen as many churches as we have seen in the last 3 months they all start to look the same. So we headed out to the Melbas chocolate & confectionary factory and I found my new home. They had every sort of chocolate/lolly that you could think of and free samples. Definitely heaven. Next store to the choccy shop was a cheese factory, (all I needed was wine and I wouldn't have left) to try goats cheese for the first time. Yummy, and brought a slab of "goat on a hot tin roof (chilly) ", will be buying that when I am back home. From there we headed down to Victor Harbour to see the penguins again but the centre for the injured birds was closed. Once again we are not suppose to see all these bloody animals, so we have decided not to look for anymore, they can come to us.

But Victor Harbour had the most fantastic whale museum for the kids, complete with a couple of question sheets. We need as much help with school work as we can get. I can't wait to send them to school in Darwin. This was also the place Kaine did his first poo in the toilet. Yay, no more nappies!!! Just thought you might be interested in that little fact.

Then we headed over on a horse drawn tram to explore Granite Island, Zara thought it was the funniest thing when I told her the horse was wearing a bag on its bottom to collect the poo. She thought I was crazy, every in the tram had a bit of a chuckle. Mentioning that the animals could come to us from now on, they did. We saw overgrown seagulls that we later found out to be albatross, a seal and a pod of about 30 dolphins. Granite Island also had a fantastic walk around it checking out the massive granite rocks. Leaving here late, we had our first run in with the navigation lady on Jamie's phone. She tried sending us home on the expressway, which sounded like an awesome idea as it took about 15mins off of our hour trip. Heading towards the expressway we found they decided to close it, for what reason I have no idea. So we continued driving and she rerouted us to another road for a few kms then told us to get back on the expressway again. Silly women, its closed. Eventually we did get home only making the trip 45mins longer than the original time. Never mind, just another one of the joys of travelling.

Leaving Adelaide the next morning we had a big drive ahead of us to Port Augusta. The beautiful green grasses and beach side views had changed to brown grass and junkyard properties. We stopped for a bite to eat at Port Germein which boasted to have the largest timber jetty in the Southern Hemisphere, originally measuring 1676m but a little bit of it had fallen down. Back in its hayday Port Germein was Australia's largest grain shipping port. The kids an I had a great walk out the tide was out quite a bit and the water was crystal clear. We saw a new way of launching a boat with a home made tractor, pretty funny to watch. Once we left Port Germein the scenery changed again and we had some great views of the Flinders Ranges.

Arriving in Port Augusta by 2pm which was a lot earlier than we expected we went to check out the local town. I must say not very exciting at all. The most exciting thing we saw was a guy spray painting the local skate park park with a spray can. He was very talented. The caravan park we stayed at gave us the worst night sleep ever, (even worse than the 100km winds of Kangaroo Valley). Straight over a river opposite the park was were the 3km trains pulled in and I'm not sure what they were doing but all you heard all night was metal scrapping and engine noise. My ipod with Pink blaring in my ears still didn't cover the sounds.

Next up is the 6 hour drive to Coober Pedy.