Barossa Valley: The Wine Capitol of Australia

The golden hues of the vineyards.
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The Barossa Valley was a fun stop on our journey around the country.  The vineyards were so beautiful and very relaxing.  It's not just about the wine you know - it's about the atmosphere - and every winery tried to capture this in everything it did from the food, music, and lighting to of course the wine!  I think we probably took a thousand pictures of the area as we drove from vineyard to vineyard.  We came at the perfect time of year because it was autumn and everything was changing colours so we got to see everything in hues of gold and red.  It was very stunning.

The grounds of the Grant Burge winery.
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Well, being that we were in the wine region, Michael and I were really wanting to do some wine tasting but never really had before so we were feeling a little self conscious.  We had no idea about the whole dry, sweet, full bodied thing we just knew about the cheap and expensive kind of thing so we felt very out of our league.  Fortunately, the first place that we stopped was very helpful and made us feel completely comfortable.  She spent a lot of time explaining all of the intricacies of the wines and their flavours.  It wasn't long before we were swishing, swirling and spitting along with the rest of them!  This made us feel more comfortable to wander into a few more and try it on our own.  Well it wasn't too long before Michael had to put a "cork" on me tasting any more wine.  I was getting kind of "tipsy"!

It wasn't long before we were swishing, swirling and spitting along with the rest of them!

and more.....
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So, after all of the wine tastings we decided to take a walk around some of the grounds.  The first place we stopped, at the Grant Burge winery, we met a couple of ladies that were very nice and offered to take some pictures for us.  It turns out that one of them was a photography student so she was wanting some more practice.  She took a number of really beautiful pictures for us with our camera.  It was greatly appreciated - I think they turned out great!

Anyway, after all of our wine tasting, we decided that we would see a show.  I just want to mention here that we got the idea to see this show out of Lonely Planet, a sort of second bible for us if you will, that we have found to be quite reliable and in most cases trust it's judgement.  It came highly recommended.   It was after this show when we started asking for second opinions....

Pictures from our photography friend...
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Norm's Coolie's is a dog show in which all of these (around 40+) Coolie's (sheepdogs basically) were to respond to Norm's commands en masse.  Well this show has been in operation for I think 100 years and Norm I think is 110 years old so bless him really bless him it was not really so good.  It took about 10 minutes for him to get all of those dogs in a line and then another 10 to make them all lie down and so on and so on.  It was truly sooooo bad.  BUT, Norm was so cute in his old old age and so were all the dogs in their old age ( I don't think some could hear) that it was still worth our $8.00 each.

and more....
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Heather and Michael