Well, the Clare Gourmet Weekend has come and gone and I am pleased to report that the Marshies (or at least one of them...no guessing who) have remained relatively unscathed!
We began the weekend on Friday evening by accepting an invitation to dinner with Trish and Kerry Lampard. Kerry and I crewed together on 'Poppy' in the recent Adelaide to Lincoln yacht race. Further to that, Kerry is the President of the SAS Association in Adelaide and is also a member of the Combined Ex-Service Mess, with which I am actively involved. What is all this nonsense about six points of separation? After pre-dinner drinks watching the antics of 'Whipper' and 'Snipper', the two resident alpacas, we sat down to a delightful meal and some excellent wine. A great way to start the weekend.
Our approach to the festivities of Saturday was uncharacteristically restrained. In fact with the exception of a sortie into the market held in the main street of Clare on the Saturday morning (where we caught up with a former Police mate of mine who is now growing olives in the valley) we did very little during the day in anticipation of the fine time to be had at the 'Long Table' event being held at Taylors Wines that evening. We were not disappointed.
We began the weekend on Friday evening by accepting an invitation to dinner with Trish and Kerry Lampard. Kerry and I crewed together on 'Poppy' in the recent Adelaide to Lincoln yacht race. Further to that, Kerry is the President of the SAS Association in Adelaide and is also a member of the Combined Ex-Service Mess, with which I am actively involved. What is all this nonsense about six points of separation? After pre-dinner drinks watching the antics of 'Whipper' and 'Snipper', the two resident alpacas, we sat down to a delightful meal and some excellent wine. A great way to start the weekend.
Our approach to the festivities of Saturday was uncharacteristically restrained. In fact with the exception of a sortie into the market held in the main street of Clare on the Saturday morning (where we caught up with a former Police mate of mine who is now growing olives in the valley) we did very little during the day in anticipation of the fine time to be had at the 'Long Table' event being held at Taylors Wines that evening. We were not disappointed.
Liz and I are very good friends with Neil Jericho, the general Manger of Taylors, and his good wife Kay, and we were delighted to not only catch up with them and others, but were very pleased that this inaugural event for Taylors was such an outstanding success. Various courses of Italian cuisine prepared by the owners of a new Burra restaurant (a native Italian of significant culinary skill and his Australian wife) were presented together with a selection of some of Taylors finest drops. The food was first class, the wines excellent and the company jolly......indeed a night to remember and hopefully emulate next year. As a small aside in the vein of (according to Liz) 'Pete knows someone everywhere we go in Australia' one of Neil's staff who was on duty during the evening is the daughter of the Orroroo based NRM colleague of mine with whom we had had a drink some two weeks ago.
After a somewhat late start (for us at least) we toddled of to Stonebridge late Sunday morning. It remains my contention that the 1 km walk from the caravan park accounted for the fact that numerous glasses of thirst slaking bubbles were the necessary order of the the next few hours before we wandered back to fulfil our previously promised duty to light the fire in the main park BBQ area. Moths to the flame! I am sure that within the next two hours 90 % of the population of the entire park had gathered. It soon became clear that the festivities of the past two days had left some in various states of disarray and your corespondent has to admit to having joined them after an hour or so of chat around the fire. Fortunately the wifely tug on the earlobe was enough to persuade me that a return to our van and some food was a very sound idea...and indeed it was.
Another return trip to Adelaide the following morning resulted in yet more transferred from the van into storage before we returned to Clare to dismantle the annex, pack away our kit and make ready for the real start of the adventure.
An early morning temperature of 0.4 degrees proved the wisdom of the decision to hitch up the previous evening and we were away by just before nine en route to Peterborough. As I have previously mentioned, the park there is owned by a chap with whom I served on the board of the Childhood Cancer Association so it was no surprise to know someone in the park. What did really throw both of us, however, was the fact that as we were setting up the door of the van on the next site opened from which emerged a couple we have known through UN ties and SAPOL for years and whom we had visited at their regular winter haunt in Main Beach, Southport, on our last trip. What an extraordinary thing! Unfortunately they had commitments here with relatives and left this morning, but not before we arranged to meet in Cobar on Saturday next.
We had a cursory look around Peterborough that afternoon, booked into the Steamtown night show for tonight, did the required shopping and returned for happy hour.. We awoke this morning to a somewhat disturbing forecast which has sadly proven accurate. As I go to press, we are hunkered down in the van in winds of 40-55 knots which have been driving clouds of swirling dust over the entire town including the caravan park for the past five hours or so. Fortunately we managed a good walk before things turned nasty and despite my severe aversion to dust I have been sparing a thought for all those farmers we saw seeding yesterday as we travelled thought the mid-north. I can only hope that they have retained some of their topsoil by the time the promised rains arrive.
The conditions did produce one really poignant moment for us. We visited nearby Terowie mid-morning (the scene of the railway station "I shall return" address by MacArthur during WWII). As we drove into the main street, the Australian version of the American 'tumbleweed', so associated with western movies centred in bleak, desolate, dusty western towns of the 1800's, was swirling and cascading in great cavalcades along the otherwise totally deserted main street as if to emphasise the fact that at least 95% of the buildings which lined it were empty and derelict. It was no surprise to later read on one of the very well presented plaques at the old railway station that the demise of the railway activities in Terowie, with the advent of the standard gauge line, had caused despair to descend on the town. It is certainly now a mere shell of its former self when all the rail freight being brought up from Adelaide on the broad gauge line had to be transferred manually to the narrow gauge rolling stock which traversed the line further north. I was also struck by the irony of the fact that this apparent utter transport policy stupidity (broad gauge so far and then narrow gauge) had been driven entirely by funding constraints. Sounded strikingly like the one way southern expressway in Adelaide!
Hopefully the wind will have abated somewhat by this evening when we venture forth the to local railway museum. I remain hopeful that the Bureau has accurately predicted the milder weather conditions for our planned departure for Little Topar tomorrow. Where you ask? Our first venture into the world of free camping at a small roadhouse stop some 80kms east of Broken Hill on the Barrier Highway is our next stop followed by two nights in Cobar and thence north along the Mitchell Highway to Bourke, Cunnamulla and Charleville which we plan to reach by 30 May.
Sorry, still no photos...working on it!
Hopefully the wind will have abated somewhat by this evening when we venture forth the to local railway museum. I remain hopeful that the Bureau has accurately predicted the milder weather conditions for our planned departure for Little Topar tomorrow. Where you ask? Our first venture into the world of free camping at a small roadhouse stop some 80kms east of Broken Hill on the Barrier Highway is our next stop followed by two nights in Cobar and thence north along the Mitchell Highway to Bourke, Cunnamulla and Charleville which we plan to reach by 30 May.
Sorry, still no photos...working on it!
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