Chookarloo to McLaren Vale

This weekend the 4wd, camping, boating and fishing show was on at the Adelaide showgrounds. As we are already thinking about our future camping ‘outfit’ we were keen to check out some ideas and new developments mainly in regards to car rooftop tents.

Also Sander wanted to visit the Miners Den stand as after months of research and contemplating he decided to buy a metal (gold) detector. Hey, as we are out and about that much we might as well try to spend our time wisely in Australia’s former goldfields.

The show was interesting and I believe this is a candy store for grown up men. In particular if they like the outdoors. 4wd cars, parts, lights, 4wd caravans and everything you can think of, they sell it.

We spent about 3 hours at the show and drove to Glenelg Beach afterwards. This is a very touristic suburb at the beach (very popular with young people). We walked around for a bit but got annoyed with the crowd pretty quickly so after doing some shopping we drove back to our campsite.

During the evening a caretaker came to tell us the next day would be a ‘total fire ban’ day and from 24.00 hrs camp and stove fires where prohibited. SA had a very dry spring and the chance of bush-fires is predicted to be very high this summer.

The next morning we were woken up by a ranger and once again we were told about the ‘total fire ban’. Not fully awake we told him we already knew and fell back asleep. Two hours later he woke us up again. This time he was angry and asked us why we were still there. Oops, there seemed to be a little mis-communication. On Total Fire Ban days they close the forest we were camping at. That meant we had to pack the car ASAP!

We weren’t the only ones that didn’t get the message quite right as many where still packing when we drove off. At the gate the ranger apologized to us for the mis-communication.

The ironic part is that the day turned out to be less windy and warm as predicted. But as we know how dry SA is at the moment we totally understand that they are not taking any risks.

Due to the early wake-up call we were a bit lost for a bit and after driving around like a pair of zombies we finally ended up at McLaren Vale. Actually we ended up there twice. The first time to get fuel, the second time was about 45 minutes later to pick up our fuel cap. Oh well, maybe it was meant to be as we booked ourselves in at the nearest Caravan Park (Lakeside) and just enjoyed the day relaxing, reading  and doing some laundry.