Weekend North of Adelaide

We had missed Rodney’s 60th due to the lockdown for Covid-19, so we headed for Owen to catch up with him in a socially distanced way, now that we are OK to travel around our state. Julian and Janine visited as well.

We always enjoy a garden walk in Rodney’s Garden. This one included some new spinning sculptures and admiration of the many Salvias that he has growing around his yard.

We did a little caching on the way to Hamley Bridge – remembering the Pinery Fires.

Lunch was on the verandah at the friendly little Gallery 14 cafe at Hamley Bridge, where somehow we sat chatting until they had to toss us out!

Then a little more caching in the local area before saying good bye to Julian and Janine.

We had visited the old bridge many years ago – always great to visit these areas, and it is looking great around here after those excellent rains.

Back at Rodney’s place we enjoyed dinner and jigsaw work while we caught up, then to bed after a late night.

Bacon and egg breakfast (with lovely fresh eggs from the friendly chooks) .

We took a jigsaw, eggs, delicious hazelnut choc cupcakes, and some Balaclava buns with us and headed on our way to Melrose.

The Stone Hut bakery was open so we stopped there for lunch ( take away, as they already had their maximum of 10 people eating outside)

A quick stop at Wirrabra silos to record the art as we travelled through town.

As we came through Melrose we stopped and had a chat to the staff at the local bike shop (Over the Edge) before proceeding on to the Showgrounds, where the permanent foot orienteering course is based. There we enjoyed a nice cuppa from the thermos, before heading off to check out the controls and map.

The campground caretaker was not aware of any issues, and we found no controls missing, but there are some updates to the map required. These were duly recorded to be discussed with our club mapper.

The room we had booked at Melrose Holiday Units was excellent – with a great airconditioner (for heating, comfy beds and enough facilities to be comfy without being over the top. For only $90 it was excellent. That’s our input into the local regional coffers.

Sunday morning saw a reasonably slow start, and we headed out to check most of the MTB course controls. The courses are over the same area as the nature trail walk covers, so we combined the two, taking some cross country options to cover off all the controls we could, but missing the far Northern and Southern and a couple in the middle, which we somehow managed to avoid without realising until later. As it was, we covered a bit over 5km , with over 200m of climb – plenty for Trev’s achilles to take on, given the exercise the day before as well.

We enjoyed our “car picnic” lunch sitting near the monument, overlooking Melrose, before checking another couple of controls.

We decided to check out the gigantic tree in the middle of a street (with a cache)

, and got talking to the lady who lives there, who then introduced us to the people who are restoring the old brewery/mill buildings across the road. Young Emma kindly gave us a tour. The Jacka brothers brewery was built in 1878 as a flour mill, and operated as a brewery between 1894 and 1934.

The old bottling plant, later used as a shearing shed, is being converted into classy accommodation, and the basement area below will be a large room suitable for parties and receptions, with lovely exposed stone work and a bar down one end. Beautiful slab redwood tables are being prepared.

There is a wonderful “sunken garden” area beside the old bottling/shearing shed building, enclosed by lovely stone walls, with an open top and a staircase going up to ground level, where another bar area and covered area for a pizza oven and argentinian grill are being constructed.

The old flour mill building, with it’s five levels (in incredibly good shape) looks down over the larger building and will one day house an art gallery and antique shop. The view from the top is amazing.

Glamping options on the adjoining yard area will also be offered in time.

This will be a great place for craft weekends, artists retreats, music concerts, weddings and parties. A very ambitious and energetic project, which has a booking already for October, so they really have their work cut out for them.

We drove out of town to the south, using the Bridle Trail as our route to Port Pirie. We have used this track a number of times and always enjoy the spectacular views. Today we could easily see over to Yorke Peninsula and down to Pt Pirie as we were spoilt with a stunningly clear day. The road was definitely 4WD in places following the last rains (and possibly a bit of use on a wet track which has cut it up).

We were in Pirie in time to enjoy a few hours of great company with Peter, Belinda, Matthew, James and Isabelle, and to inspect the empty space where their kitchen/dining room used to be before heading homewards in the dark.

A busy long weekend, full of great company and beautiful places. It is so good to be able to move around our wonderful state again.