Exploring our new digs......

On Thursday we passed our online induction session.  On Monday I (Liz) starts work at 8.30am to 4pm. I will be doing a full week of training.  It's only a 14 km drive to work which is great. I will be trained as a wheat classifier where I have been told that trucks line up 3 wide and as far as you can see. I will be inspecting the wheat in the trucks and then classing its grade. So I'll be inspecting the wheat that you eat!! As Rob's supervisor David is taking a week off, due to school holidays, he starts the following week.

He will take this opportunity to fly to Brisbane and finish wiring our mate Rick's house.

As the season ramps up we will be working 12 hours a day and 6 days a week!! So we decided yesterday to take ourselves off for a little exploring - and what did we find?  The Clare Valley Reisling Trail - YAY!!

Clare Valley is renowned for it's fabulous reislings - so we decided to put them to the test.

Wine tasting that is.  First stop for us was Eldredge Vineyards

We sampled one of their reds with dinner the other night and it was good - but their prize Shiraz "The Blue Chip" was superb. Their reisling wasn't bad either!!!!

We stopped at Spring Gully Lookout which forms part of the Spring Gully conservation park. 

Beautiful spot for a wee snack

Next on our agenda was Seven Hills - an amazing winery.  First established in 1848 by the Jesuit Priests who migrated to Australia. Three years later they planted Clare Valley's first grapes to make sacremental wine.

and here's Rob inspecting their grapevines

They have a beautiful church

and a massive underground cellar

and of course some serious wines for tasting

and here are the original buildings that the priests first lived in

Our next stop we thought would have to be Taylor's wines (any relation to you Janet?)

As you can see they have a massive operation going, it covers 750 hectares with 6000 oak barrels in use, and one barrel equals 20 cases of wine - now that's alot of wine

and that brings us to the end of our wine trail for the day - apparently there are 42 more wineries and 37 cellar doors to visit - oh my oh my oh my!!!!!!!

Here is our little booty - should keep us going for quite a while

Today is Balaklava Show Day - just like a mini Ekka - so we are off to see some sheep shearing, wood chopping and whatever else they have on display.

Our new home for several months.....Balaklava, South Australia

After leaving Broken Hill we travelled through some wild wild west landscape, no trees just bracken and thistle and red dirt. 

That night we stopped at Oodla Wirra - and about 50 metres from the quarantine checkpoint.  We ate all our vegies here apart from 2 onions which we handed over - naughty naughty!!!

The landscape changes before our eyes and within a few hundred kilometres we start to pass through green fields full of sheep and rolling plains. It reminded me of England. Beautiful homesteads and small towns, heritage buildings of sandstone. Miles of huge wind generators lined the landscape.

  

Canola is a well grown crop in these parts and the fields of yellow gold in the sunshine were lovely

We stopped along the way at Mount Bryan OMG it was soooo cold - out came the scarves and the beanies, even Buddy had to put his little jumpy on.

A quick pitstop at Manoora and it's still freezing, we were looking for someone open to sell us hot chippies to warm us up.....

and then Auburn - where we found our hot chippies - YAY!!!! This is only 10 minutes away from Balaklava and is a beautiful heritage town. A place to explore on our days off.

We come to the top of a hill and we see Balaklava in the distance

and here's the wheat that we eat

We have been exploring our new town and it's a fairly laid back small town.

Yesterday we filled out our employment packs, got fitted with our steel cap boots and Viterra shirts.  Now off for our induction session so will update you later

NEWSFLASH NEWSFLASH NEWSFLASH NEWSFLASH

We are fast tracking to Bowman's in South Australia where we will be working for Viterra during the 2010/11 wheat harvest - we are not exactly sure on what roles we will have but we will be doing induction on Thursday and the start of our training.

We will be living at Balaclava Caravan Park and hope to arrive there tomorrow afternoon some time.

It will be interesting so stay tuned..........

On the road again.....yeehaaaaaa

Our first stop after Lightning Ridge was Brewarrina, at a great spot called 4 mile camp 

After watching the sunset we had a lovely camp fire and dinner

We started out early and drove through the back of Bourke and then our next stop was Cobar.  From the opal mines we came into the gold, silver, copper and zinc mines. We parked up at a lovely spot on a big lake

Went for a stroll into Cobar - a very interesting little town

After coffee it was a lovely walk around the lake if you look way over in the distance you can see the bus in the background

Leaving Cobar we travelled to Little Topar via Wilcannia (it looked like a ghost town from a mad max movie) and fuel is way over priced. We were privy to the most spectacular display of wild flowers we have ever seen for about 200kms - long purple wildflowers lined the highways and fields of yellow and white flowers went as far as we could see - it sometimes looked like it had just snowed - it was absolute magic and mother nature at her finest.

We stopped for the night at Little Topar Roadhouse

A totally different landscape than anywhere we have stayed

An early start to the day we travelled to Broken Hill and across the time zone - where it is half an hour earlier and we are 50kms from the South Australian border - YAY!!!!!!

Went for a wander down the main street - this town has loads of character

Farewell Lightning Ridge

In about an hour we will be leaving Lightning Ridge. We have made many new friends here and it will be a bit sad to move on however am looking forward to hitting the open road and adventures once again. We gave it our last shot on Tuesday and once again went specking at Grawin - but the big colourful nobby alluded us.  Funny story - Rob was working out Aaron's mine on one of the agitators - he was up and down the ladder many times and on his last day there he picked up his rubbish and put it in the bin.  As he was doing this he kicked a stone out of the ground.  As he was talking, Aaron bent down and picked up the stone Rob kicked out of the ground - it was a blue and green nobby and worth $2,000!!!! If Rob had picked it up and handed it to Aaron he would have got a percentage but alas it was not meant to be!!!!!! Rob did however get to finally go down a 60 metre shaft on a loose ladder (scary) with no torch or lights.  He got to the bottom and waited for his eyes to adjust and then he saw a small glow in the distance - he walked about 50 metres and found the boys hard at work looking for opal - they managed to pull up about $1 million in opals in 6 weeks!!
After 5 weeks we finally got to see the last step to opal mining - the cutting and polishing of stones.

Happy cutting and polishing a small black opal with a smidge of red through it that Rob found.  There are two wheels on the machine - one for polishing and one for cutting.  Water runs continually as this happens.

So it's a fond farewell and a big thanks to our happy hosts Teena and Happy for looking after us at our time in the Ridge, we have great memories of our stay here (and a jar of small colourful specks toprove it).

Lightning Ridge (Part 4)

We are looking at moving on next week from Lightning Ridge. It's been an interesting time.

Last Thursday night we went out to Lorne Station Caravan Park where Rob has been doing some rewiring. They had a live entertainment night.  Some 50 people enjoyed sitting around open fires and watching Neil play some fine instrumental music and some rip roaring songs. He has played with the Emmanuel brothers and is very good. He now runs the park with his wife Christine.

After the show we sat around talking to some local SES workers, off duty police, and a few campers. More interesting stories here.

The bore baths are the best place to be in winter and seeing as it's been the coldest, wettest winter in the Ridge for over 30 years we frequented these every evening.  They were built in 1963 and locals are there more regularly to socialise than the local pub or club!!

The water comes from 1km below the earth's surface and a good soak in them is quite relaxing - ahhhhh

Rob has been doing some maintenance work on the equipment out at Aaron's mine.  Below is where the diggers go in and tunnel out under the ledges so that they collapse, then it's into the trucks to be inspected for opals later.

That's all for now but stay tuned as next week we will should have some exciting news!!!!!!!