Barossa sisterhood

My sister and her partner came over to join us for a week lured by the promise of cheese and wine in the Barossa Valley. From the Barossa’s recent advertising campaign I was, I think, subconsciously expecting to be striding around in the warm rain wearing white and licking double cream off wooden spoons. It’s a hell of a campaign if you like food. Thing is though, the Barossa is nothing like that.

It’s surprisingly flat, industrial and repetitive. Sure there are chateaus and quaint stone vineyards tucked away up there and the bakery in Tanunda has pretzels but it’s a long way from the prettiest part of an admittedly very pretty state.

My sister works very hard. She does tremendous work that needs to be done and she does it incredibly well. I know this because for the past two years we worked at the same organisation. But it’s exhausting. So a week’s holiday interstate is an important thing. Due to my sister’s work commitments and it being my fault we are apart due to the whole going off travelling and then moving to Colombia thing, I was responsible for organising the holiday. 

We managed to pick them up at the airport just in time after a timing miscalculation that involved us boiling water for coffee and doing breakfast dishes in the foreshore park in Glenelg while the less financially restrictive watched from their holiday apartment balconies or glared as they power walked past with their tiny dogs. It was slightly humiliating. The dishwater had a lot of bubbles.

We ended up intercepting them in the airport pick up area and loaded them into the back of the intricately repacked Jazz. There was no denying that fitting an extra two people and two large bags was challenging. We drove into Adelaide to show them the highlights and spent around 30 minutes looking for a free park of more than two hours. After that, two hours seemed like enough.

I pointed out the gorgeous architecture, the mysterious ‘polites’ signage, the city library and parklands and Haighs but they were very tired and hot. So we squeezed back in Rojito and took the scenic drive up to Tanunda.

Staying at paying camp grounds is not just about running water and showers and camp kitchens though these things are increasingly feeling like extraordinary luxury. To be worth the cash they have to offer that little bit extra. And that little bit extra is, specifically, a giant jumping pillow. 

This is because, on my first glorious trip to WOMAD, we stayed at a camp ground that had one AND adults were allowed on it. I've never forgotten it. If you jump on it at the same time as kids they go flying off in all directions.

I had regretfully forgone a repeat stay at this legendary campground in Adelaide because it was much more expensive than other options but when we drove into our tiny campsite in Tanunda, there it was in all its stripey bouncy glory. 

This almost compensated for my sister's exhausted and stricken face when she realised that they had forgotten the plug for their lilo (the campground owners kindly lent her a mattress and we bought a 'twin' replacement the next day that apparently fitted two people only if they both lay on their sides).

In a quick trip into town to buy booze and pate I had noted an appropriately hipster breakfast venue and the next morning so it turned out. It’s called Nosh. They serve scrambled eggs in tea cups and have waffles on their lunch menu and when I accidentally started drinking my sister's coffee they made her another one.

Feeling the boldness of a successful breakfast selection, I decided that we should go for a walk to the ‘sleepy hamlet of Bethany’ in the afternoon via a couple of wineries. These were very good. We walked along what we hoped was a disused (or rarely used) train line past the sweet little station and an enormous pile of discarded grape skins that looked exactly like oily crushed deep purple pastels. 

And then we just kept walking. For a while I kept up an optimistic patter about the history of the village and its supposed picturesqueness and how we would enjoy our iced coffees so much more when we got there. But there never came. The houses petered out into fields again without so much as a rundown petrol station with a Coke machine. I was in trouble.

We plodded back to the campground spread out along the road, each sunk in our own private hot and thirsty thoughts. Luis hit high speed on his long legs and disappeared over the horizon. By the time we caught up with him outside the camp office he was finishing the last sips of a cold drink.

An apologetic icecream later and we were back in business.

Over the next few days we sampled as much of the famed Barossa food and wine as we could. We tried every chutney, jam, pate and olive oil at Maggie Beer's Farm and we sampled a lot of wine in search of the perfect rose. Interesting fact, the 'picnic hampers' at Maggie Beer's are some bread, some salad and an off the (supermarket) shelf pate. Delicious certainly but also lacking some the the rustic sumptuousness expected from the experience.

The highlight of this part of the trip for me was an evening spent at an Asian hooker food inspired event at one of the wineries. We had seen this advertised as we swung through for our free tasting and promised to come back mostly to spend more time in their beautiful garden. When we rolled in later in the evening something was clearly very wrong. The event organisers had managed to secure the least appropriate DJ possible for this very lovely family event. The lush grass in front of the food stalls and the speakers was almost completely empty as families and the semi-retired took their picnic rugs as far out of earshot as possible. Between dance remixes and the latest outer suburban club hits played at high volume the hapless and no doubt lovely fellow in charge of the music exhorted the crowd to get up and dance. When we perused the food stands I, like so many of the under 5's present at the event, had to cover my ears with my hands. But as the night wore on and the occasional classic hit got a whirl and we finished our bottle of rose, things started to fall into place. It was lovely watching kids running riot with glow sticks and my sister surreptitiously snipping of a selection of herbs out of the garden (just as our mother before us would have done) and it was lovely being there all together.