Wednesday 6 December – Started the novel “Elites of Eden” by Joey Graceffa, the follow up novel “Children of Eden”. I am looking forward to getting into the second book of this series and seeing how the characters progress.
Moana – Barossa Valley
We had a lovely blue sky day ahead of us for our travels out to the Barossa Valley. As it was a bit of a hike, we were happy to be up just after 730am and get straight into our usual morning stuff, before jumping in the car and driving for an hour and 45min north before heading east. This meant driving through the city outskirts, putting up with the traffic, road works and the poor road conditions. Once we cleared Port Wakefield, we saw the Barossa sign and followed it to the hills and the town of Tanunda.
We arrived in town at 1045am and headed straight for the tourist bureau to pick up a map. Paul found some fliers for 2 other breweries we didn’t know of and then we walked the street. I was keen to get into Tanunda as my grand father’s family were some of the early German settlers in the area.
I had some information about churches they attended and burial sites in the respective cemeteries, so we walked the small blocks to locate the various places. First was St Johns Lutheran church, where Great, Great, Great Grandfather was a founding member. We walked around the the perimeter of the church. I would have liked to go inside, but it was all closed up.
We then walked the next to the next block to check out Langmeil Lutheran church, while the family weren’t members of this congregation, Great Great Great Grandfather and Grandmother are buried in the cemetery and I was able to locate their headstone amongst the old graves, marvelling that they have been there since 1884 and 1892.
We decided to check out the Langmeil church, finding a lady in the office who happily opened up the church for us to have a look around. It was really just another church.
Satisfied that I had seen everything there was to see, we returned to the car and drove out to Jacobs Creek Winery. While we were there to try the wines, I was also keen to stand in ancestral lands, as the family owned land on Jacobs Creek. We entered the wine tasting room, wandered around the various things for sale and then settled in for a tasting. The wines were lovely, as you would expect and we came away with a few bottles.
We left Jacobs Creek to return to Tanunda and the Barossa Valley Brewing Company where we met up, with Denham, the owner. He talked us through the brewery and how it came about before running Paul through the beers. We were taken through the brewery, meeting the brewers and then returned to the front where we ordered our lunch.
We watched the last day of the cricket while we waited and then chatted with the head brewer about his side meadery project. Lunch arrived and it was huge and I knew I would not need anything for dinner. We finished up our meals, said goodbye and began the next part of the journey.
We located the second brewery, Rehn and while Paul was able to talk to the brewer he couldn’t try the beers due to licensing laws and we left shortly after.
We drove to a lookout to check out the view over the vineyards, squares of green vines and gold wheat were quite striking and we could see it stretching on for miles. From the hill, we drove back through Tanunda and on to St Johns cemetery in the hope I would be able to locate Great Great Grandfather and Mother. The cemetery was larger than the previous, but not huge and we decided to check the “old” end first. Kleemanns were everywhere. I think at least half of the old section was Kleemann dominated. We read out all of the names, some were familiar from my reading of the ancestry book and eventually we came across Johannes, born on Kangaroo Island in 1839 and died in 1920. Happy with the find, we returned to the car and continued our journey.
We stopped in at the Steiny’s Traditional Mettwurst shop, sampling the different sausages and then picking up a couple of varieties. Paul mentioned we stopped in because Denham had told us about getting his malt smoked here. They were happy to show us around and through the production area, where many sausages were hanging to dry out.
Happy with our day, we continued our drive past Jacob’s Creek once again and into Rowland Flats where the family had settled in the 1800s and then we took the road through Gawler before manning the very slow crawl back to the van. Being peak hour, it was a long and stop started drive, not making home until 6pm.
We had had a big day and were both exhausted and still full from our lunch so the evening was spent being lazy. I watched a couple of episodes of A Place to Call Home whole Paul wrote up his reviews. Just before 8 I put through a quick soup dinner and then at 815pm, we got off our bums and went for a walk taking in the beauty of the sunset and the clear but cool night. We walked for a fair distance before turning around and returning home, making it back for bed at 915, happy to read until lights out.
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