Clare

We temporarily farewelled the Murray River with a day in Goolwa, where we took a Coorong Discovery Cruise down through the lock and past the mouth of the Murray to make a brief stop in the national park.

The weather was pretty bad, and the southerly winds were pushing the tide up and creating quite a maelstrom at the entrance to the river. In fact we actually had to rise up in the lock to reach the level of the sea.

The scenery, though, was fascinating, and the bleak weather made our quick visit to Storm Boy country all the more appealing. We hopped off the boat and walked some distance through the dunes into a fascinating and peaceful - if cold - environment.

We stayed the night in Goolwa then in the morning did a rather tedious drive, skirting around Adelaide, through Gawler and on to Clare.

There wasn’t much happening in Clare that afternoon - apart from 11-degree temperatures, strong winds and intermittent rain squalls. We arrived too late for a mooted winery lunch so did some washing instead!

Before leaving Clare the following morning we took a drive out to Mintaro for a look around the historic town, then out to Martindale Hall - a grand stone mansion built in 1880, incredibly stylish and filled with some magnificent pieces of furniture.

As it was built by a rich guy - he even imported 50 tradesmen from England - Martindale Hall was surrounded by a polo ground, racecourse, boating lake and a cricket pitch. Kind of makes our cabin in the caravan park seem rather puny!Read more