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It rained during the night. Poured, actually. We woke up in the
morning and got the laundry from the dryer. By this time the rain
had stopped, but there were still lingering clouds in the area.
We made one last check and noted, sadly, that the bird was still
not in the nest in the garden. Then we went off to breakfast,
checked out, and went to the airstrip to await our flight.
We had a tight schedule to deal with today. Our flight was to
take off at 9:15am, landing at 10am, and our flight out from Cairns
to Adelaide was leaving at 10:45am. Originally, it was 11:15am,
but it was moved up after I bought the tickets. During those 45
minutes I knew we'd have to claim our luggage, get our old bags
from the locker, and wheel everything down to the Quantas terminal
and check in for our flight.
We planned in advance -- Jean would get the bags while I fed $2
coins into the locker machine. As we waited for our plane to land,
it started to rain. It poured briefly before dying down. The plane
landed a little after 9am and the people got off the plane and
were greeted with the punch, but since it was cold and early in
the morning, no one took any. I was happy to take a spare glass
of punch. :)
We were all set to go, but the woman at the counter was busy talking
with one of the people who'd just landed. After what seemed an
eternity she finally said to him that she'd load the plane with
the new passengers first and then get back to him. I was bit nervous,
as this was taking precious minutes away from our already short
45 minute window.
It didn't rain at all on the flight to Cairns. We did pass through
some incredibly bright white clouds, but that was it. The plane
was only partially full -- 13 passengers instead of 18. Jean and
I made it a point to sit near the door so we could make a quick
getaway. As soon as the plane came to a halt and the copilot drew
the ladder down to the runway, Jean and I were off and running.
We got the bags from the locker, a baggage cart, and our bags
from the plane. We did a little reorganization and then sprinted
on down to the Quantas check-in line. What we saw we didn't like.
The Quantas line snaked around 5 times. We stood at the end of
the line knowing full well it would take more than 45 minutes
to get through it. Fortunately, they called out for anyone going
to Brisbane (our intermediate stop on our way to Adelaide) and
we were able to bypass the long line. Of course we had no time
to stop at the Internet cafe this time. It was straight onto the
plane.
We landed in Brisbane around 1pm and had an hour to kill before
our next flight. We had lunch and then went to our gate to wait.
One thing I distinctly remember about this flight is that the
seats were much closer together than the other planes. I had almost
no leg room. They announced the local Adelaide time over the intercom,
and we were puzzled to find out that there's a 30 minute time
difference between Adelaide and Cairns. We landed in Adelaide
around 4:30pm local time. It was cloudy and much colder than Cairns.
Jean dealt with the baggage as I went to the Thrifty counter to
pick up our rental car. I'd had to do some research on the web
to find a rental car company which would let us drive on Kangaroo
Island. Most of them explicitly prohibit it, but Thrifty does
not. So that was the reason we went with them. We got an SUV,
as we knew the roads would require it. We went to the parking
lot and loaded up our Mitsubishi Pajero. We got in the car and
started driving toward the Barossa Valley in rush hour traffic.
This was our first time driving on the trip. Jean did the driving
and I did the navigating, so she had to quickly get used to driving
on the left side of the road. It didn't help that I sometimes
had to give her last-minute turn instructions since I wasn't at
all familiar with the roads. This was also our first initiation
to Australian traffic. In and around Cairns there was no such
thing as traffic. But here in Adelaide, a big city, there was
definitely rush hour traffic.
Eventually we made it onto the main road heading toward the Barossa.
Tired and hungry, we decided to try to stop to pick up some food.
I saw a big Coles sign on the left and I remembered that was the
name of the grocery store we'd stopped at in Port Douglas. So
we drove in expecting to do some shopping. Unfortunately, it was
a Coles distribution warehouse! Laughing to ourselves, we drove
out and continued up the road.
Eventually we came upon a shopping center which had a couple grocery
stores, so we stopped there. We did a little grocery shopping
and then decided to just eat dinner at a Chinese restaurant in
the mall. I have to admit that it was much better than I expected
it to be. Australian mall food seems to be much superior to American
mall food. That's my sweeping generalization from eating at 3
Australian shopping malls.
It was dark by the time we emerged from the mall. We made the
40 minute drive to the Kaesler winery, where we were renting a
cottage. Since I didn't have a complete address (only a road),
we had to stop at a gas station to ask for directions. It turns
out we'd made a left instead of a right and had to go in the opposite
direction. Even with the correct directions it was quite hard
to spot the winery at night. But eventually we did and found someone
who showed us to our room.
The cottage was a cute little room with spartan furnishings and
a big bath. The important thing for us, though, was that it had
a great heater (it was quite cold outside).
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