Author: Mrs A
From: Coromandel Valley, Adelaide
To: Semaphore Park, Adelaide
Distance driven: 33km
As we emerged from our bed this morning Kim and Mike queried how we slept. ‘Fine, thank you’ we answered this typical morning question. But then it emerged why the question had been asked – right above our caravan last night, was a rather handsome male koala, who had apparently been doing his donkey-pig impression all night. We hadn’t noticed a thing, being completely shut up with our air conditioning on!
For a koala, he was a rather active male, as he moved positions three times throughout the morning, before climbing down the tree and strolling off down the valley to do more donkey-pig impressions up another tree. If you have never heard a male koala, click here for a link to YouTube – the sound is incredible, and so unexpected coming from a cuddly creature!
Below, Mr K senses another male koala in the air and plans his next move….
He begins to make a slow descent….
All that work deserves a break, so it’s time for another rest and stretch out those hand muscles…
Finally down to the bottom of that branch, another rest before making the rest of the journey to see the other male off…
About 20 minutes after this photo was taken we once again heard the donkey-pig sounds in the valley – he’d made the final climb down and made it to a new tree to do some grunting from!
While I was taking wildlife photos, Mr A was doing a cooking demonstration for Kim and Mike, whipping up a fine breakfast on the Weber Baby Q accompanied by a delicious sourdough loaf he’d picked up from the local bakery.
After breakfast it was time for us to pack up, say our farewells and move on. Only a short journey today, down to the Adelaide coast. Our first choice of caravan park had refused us entry, stating they allow small dogs, but not small cats. We don’t really understand that decision, particularly given Tassie is indoors 90% of the time, but grudgingly accepted it. This means we are nearly 25km away from the friends we planned to see.
The positive thing about our current location is the wifi on the park – we have access to the NBN (National Broadband Network – a faster speed of internet) and unlimited usage. Very rare – most caravan parks have offered us 300MB – open a few emails and it’s all used up, and usually tortuously slow. We have learned to not rely on getting any coverage in most places.
We had been invited to catch up with Bob and Ann Gadd, friends we had last seen back in May in the Hunter Valley just as we were setting off on our adventure. We decided to Uber over to see them – driving would not really be an option – they are wine connoisseurs and we were taking one of our favourite prize winning wines from Amelia Park.
Lots of delicious food was eaten, amazing wines consumed and many travel stories and tips shared – Bob and Ann have been all over Australia and have plenty of ideas of locations to visit that are off the beaten track…we have a long way to go!
A surprise visitor arrived at the end of the evening, their son Mike over from the Margaret River for a wine judging course. It was the first time we had met Mike in person (see him in Cathy’s photos on Facebook occasionally) – though we talked about him and his wife Virginia a lot in the Margaret River!
We caught another Uber back home at the end of the evening – our latest night for a while at nearly 1am!
The below photo (as we were leaving Glenelg) is quite unflattering, but mostly taken for Cathy, Mike’s sister!
Looks like you had a typical Gadd hosted night – too much food & wine & an inability to say no to one last bottle ! Sounds like a great night & a bonus having Mikey turn up 😊
Absolutely – such good fun but some of us fading towards the end (not your mum or Mike though – still going strong!!) xx