Port Adelaide – Adelaide Hills Tour

17-02-07 – We drove up to Port Adelaide where they have re-furbished a number of old Port buildings to form a shopping precinct. Unfortunately the temperature is crazy today it has got up to 40C and the un-air conditioned walks between buildings weren’t appreciated at all. We did find a nice gelato shop in a nearby Marina, which went down real well.

We bought some MDF board to replace a section of caravan seat that had collapsed and a new fan as our previous one had given up the ghost, and we really needed a fan in the van this day.

It was way too hot to hang around at the van so we decided to go for a driving tour of the Adelaide Hills to see the sights and hopefully get some cooler temperatures, the sights were good but the temperature was little better.

Our first stop was the Mt Lofty Summit Lookout, which has a survey marker come monument to Matthew Flinders, and some good views of Adelaide, see below.

Adelaide City from Mt Lofty

Mt Lofty Monument to Matthew Flinders

We drove up to Hahndorf, which an old town settled by Germans in 1839 and is the oldest German settlement in Australia. The town was named after Captain Hahn who was the master of the Zebra, which brought the first 52 families from East Germany to escape religious persecution. The first buildings were slab and mud brick huts of which few remain and they were later replaced with stone buildings from material quarried locally.

It is a premier tourist attraction in the Adelaide Hills being only 20 minutes out of Adelaide and contains quality craft shops, galleries, hotels, cafes and restaurants. There are markets held regularly, but we missed them when we were there.

The famous Australian artist Sir Hans Heysen lived most of his life here and his studio and some artwork are still on display.

After walking around for an hour or two in the oppressive heat we stopped at the old pub for a couple of very cold German beers which down a treat.

Hahndorf Village

We could’ve driven around for days in this area, seeing all the sights, but the heat was too oppressive and the time had slipped by too quickly. So we stopped at Melbas Chocolate Factory to have a look around and buy a few samples. We were quire surprised at some of the chocolate items offered including the Cow Pats (photo below), large alphabet letters, numbers, dinosaurs and various novelty figures.

On our drive back we noticed a Grumpy’s beer sign and hotel, fancy having a beer and hotel named after Grumpy (Brian).

We drove home and decided to drive back into the city for another meal at an excellent Thai restaurant that we had spotted the night before, followed by a short walk around the city and back home to the Van.