McLaren Vale

Port Walunga
Rod, Anthea and Chappy

Godfrey was keen that we visit the McLaren Vale on Sat. before returning to Adelaide for our last night. Our friends have bought property near Port Walunga and Maslin Beach and plan to build a beach house within the next two years. They anticipate spending 6 months in Toronto and 6 months in Adelaide once they retire.
We got away just before 9 a.m. and made it to Walunga Market at around 10:30 a.m. The market was lively and filled with vendors selling local produce, fruits and vegetables, meats, cheese, honey, jam, chocolate, coffee, tea, lotions and soaps etc. We walked through and bought a tussie mussie, or herbal bouquet, for Anthea and some chai tea for Keila in Cairns. I was sorry that we weren’t staying in the area for a while so that we could sample more local specialties.
We had some difficulty locating Port Walunga as it wasn’t marked anywhere, and we had to ask directions from a local. We took a stroll along the pristine beach unmarred by development. Houses are set discreetly out of sight. It looked a perfect place for a swim and there were a few people in the water. Maslin Beach is a little further down, and we found the road to it was marked and easy to follow. There is an unobtrusive sign announcing the “unclad” section to the left of the stairs leading to the beach. We peeked but didn’t see any nudes!
After that we visited the tourist information office to find out which wineries served lunch. We’d tried the small famous Star of Greece cafe, only to be disappointed because we had no reservations. Because it was Saturday, winery restaurants were crowded and we tried two before finding a table at Settlers Winery. We shared a delicious pizza and salad with glasses of shiraz and cabernet merlot. We sat outside looking at the vineyard enjoying the beautiful view.
We went back to the tourist information station to get directions back to Adelaide and arrived within 35 minutes. Rod and Anthea got home from their Australian rules football game at about 6:15 p.m., and we treated them to dinner at a local Indian restaurant, the least we could do to thank them for their two previous dinners. We’ve enjoyed staying with both ATC families; they set a very high standard. We’ve agreed to host to Aussies from Brisbane in June, I’ll have to get my act together. We got up early, said our goodbyes and headed to Adelaide airport. Now we are off to Cairns or more accurately Kuranda to stay with our friends whom we met in Montreal in the 80s.