The heat is on!!!

After spending time in Cape Le Grand NP with the most beautiful beaches and unbelievable clear water(yes, you’ve heard it before…), we cut across to Balladonia along Balladonia road. A fairly rough 4WD track, where we –after fixing our 7th flat tire- soon came to rescue two guys which unfortunately had crashed the oilreservoir of their 2WD, going through a pothole(deep hole filled with bull dust, so you can’t see that there is actually a hole).
What where they doing there with such a car anyway??
The good thing was that they rewarded us with unusual good Roadhouse food in Balladonia(but we really deserved it, they would have been stranded out there without us). But a deep cut at one of our tires from the several sharp stones along the track, saw us changing another tire…
Now we were ready to go along the straightest road in the world!
Well, we crossed the Nullarbor plain with only one more flat tire from a fixed tube that had burst.
Some people say it is a boring stretch of road, but the coastline is very spectacular.

A spontaneous decision saw us heading north, getting out of the usual tourist route with ditching the Eyre Peninsula and driving along ‘Googs track’. We were somehow again looking for the freedom and remoteness of the ‘Outback’ and therefore choose a track that should remind us on our trip through the Simpson dessert.
We passed over around 700 red sand dunes and saw not one person and almost no sign of animal life. A little bit scary.

The area south of the Flinders Ranges is very dry Farmland and can be very hilly.
Two long-distance trails meander through this area and offer an array if side trails to play on – the ‘Heysen trail’ for hiking and the ‘Mawson trail’ for mountainbike riding.
I met Bruce in Melrose, who moved from Melbourne to this rural part of SA and manages the local Bikeshop. With an early start at 6am(due to the heat), he showed me around the bike tracks and showed me that I really hadn’t trained since more than six months.
In a lovely display, the local museum tells the interesting stories about early European immigrants to this area, many of them were Germans.
The area around Adelaide is rich of german history and we were constantly reminded of the german heritage in South Australia, especially in the winemaking! But they forgot how to do good apple cake down here…

(Andy and Alex in Hahndorf)

Moving on to the Vineyards, indeed – we did a lot of wine tasting lately.
We rode along the 'Riesling trail' in the Clare Valley (it’s a funny feeling riding up and down those hills with wine in your blood and sun burning down).
And of course, we didn't miss out on the best wineries in the world famous Barossa Valley. YUMMY wine!!! I really started loving those fortified wines, the tawnys and the ports.

We managed to watch the fourth stage of the roadrace ‘Tour Downunder’ with Lance Armstrong being back on his bike(and we even rode up Mengerle Hill near Angaston on our own bikes!). We passed through the magnificent Adelaide Hills with even more hills(and wineries) to come and took our Mountainbikes for another challenging ride up and down and up and down in one of the brilliant Mountainbike parks in 40 plus degree heat.

It got unbearable hot once we’ve entered Adelaide, and South Australia’s' heatwave(46 degrees) really kicked in. So hot that everything in the car went jelly, the steel was too hot to touch and sleeping at night was just exhausting. Therefore we spent day time in Galleries, Museums, Shops and Cafes.

(The proof, Adelaide market...48 degrees)

Anything without air-condition becomes to hot to believe it, the heat can make you absolutely mad.
And funny enough we met Gabrielle and Robert again, a lovely and somewhat crazy couple that we keep bumping into since ‘Lorella Springs’ in the Northern Territory.
We had a lovely evening in a pub and listened to their funny stories.

(The Unimog/Unicat from Gabrielle and Robert)

Greetings from the Pinnaroo, we are about to drive through Ngarkat NP, along the Border track heading down South and eventually spending some time around Mount Gambier before finally entering homeland Victoria again..