Adelaide Roadtrip – Day 1 – Born To Travel Australia

Here in Australia there is a continual battle for football supremacy between the AFL (Australian Football League) and the NRL (National Rugby League) with soccer in definite third place. Each code keeps trying to produce an idea that will give them the edge, not only on field but financially through memberships, sponsorships and TV rights deals. In the last few years the AFL, our preferred code, has conducted a round where all 18 teams meet in the same state and play one round of the fixture. It is known as Gather Round. Friends of ours had been the previous two years and encouraged us to go this year with them.

So we set off for Adelaide on a cloudy but dry day. This time we weren’t taking our caravan. We were driving our smaller car. So popular is this event that when we had tried booking a caravan site at any of the caravan parks within 50 kms of Adelaide we found they were booked out. In the end we secured two apartments within a grand old house at one of the caravan parks in the northern suburb of Vale Park.

We left home on the Mornington Peninsula after Melbourne’s peak hour and even though the traffic was still busy we made good time in crossing the city. Having negotiated the city and travelling via the West Gate Bridge we continued up past Melton along the Western Highway.

After bypassing Bacchus Marsh we came to the steep Pentland Hills. Usually cars would pass us when we are towing our caravan but now we were passing caravans, trucks and other slower vehicles.

Continuing along we bypassed Ballarat before coming to Lake Burrumbeet. The remains of a tyre blowout showed that someone else hadn’t made it as safely as us.

At Beaufort we stopped and bought some lunch. This lovely mural caught our eye. Apparently the Steam Rally is a popular annual event here.

Continuing on we stopped to refuel in Ararat before passing through the small town of Great Western, home of Seppelts Wines.

Within half an hour we had the Grampians to our left.

Not long after we had a delay at a roadworks site.

Late afternoon we arrived in Nhill where we had booked to stay at the Zero Motel. After a cuppa and a rest we drove into town and had a nice Chinese dinner at Nhill Dine Inn.