Hahndorf

The Adelaide Hills are certainly the most picturesque place we have stayed up until now, although some of the rugged beauty we have already passed through rivals it as far as the spectacular goes. One of the outcomes of staying in the Hills was the fact that once again we were without Telstra coverage, something we certainly didn’t expect since we were only 25 km’s from the centre of Adelaide,  but underlines the difference between measuring the coverage as a percentage of the population versus a percentage of the country.

Cudlee Creek Caravan Park turned out to be right on the creek itself, which was a decent sized body of water. It had enormous potential, however isn’t yet taking full advantage of this. Cudlee Creek as a place is different from the perspective that it appears to consist of the caravan park and a co-located tavern, a wildlife park, a cafe and a church – spread out along about 3km’s of road, so there is never any certainty about when you have actually arrive at Cudlee Creek itself.

The caravan park had a large grassed recreation area, plenty of mature trees and a lot of room, but looked somewhat run-down – with the ablutions block being in need of significant work and a number of dilapidated and unused building around. Part of the park also obviously used to be tennis courts, with some of the bitumen still in place and one of the fences remaining, which provided a strange barrier across the middle of the park. It does appear however that the new owners are making an effort to improve the park over time. Personally, the park felt a little like being in Manjimup, with a quite beautiful forest surrounding, but a pervading feeling of dampness ever present.

The first trip we made after spending the afternoon at the Toy Factory was to Hahndorf. I had often heard how beautiful/interesting Hahndorf was but didn’t have any real preconceptions on exactly what to expect. Hahndorf turned out to be a mixture of Dunsborough/Margaret River/Subiaco, but better than all of them. On the way to Hahndorf we visited Melba’s Chocolate Factory in Woodside. This was a fantastic little business which was set out in a very inviting manner. As we had actually got going fairly early in the morning (not one of our normal strengths) we arrived right on opening time, which was a little unfortunate as the kids didn’t see a significant amount of activity in the production areas, but as we were visiting just after Easter this was more than made up for in the kids minds (and Liz’s I think) by the fact that all the left-over Easter stock was half price. This resulted in us walking out with significantly more packets than we had intended. Next door to Melba’s was Woodside Cheese Wrights which was much more up my alley. The lady running it was exceptionally generous with her tastings and in the end we bought more than we probably should have, but part of it was based on the fact that we thought she should at least recoup the value of the full morning tea she had provided to the kids by way of the tastings. This was also the first time I had enjoyed goat’s cheese which proves rather than not liking goat’s cheese itself, I had obviously just not tried decent cheese before. As we walked out Max decided that while Melba’s had been a good place to visit he had enjoyed the Cheese Wrights far more.

Next on the list was Beerenberg’s, which was the other side of Hahndorf. There were lots of things that were very inviting, but unlike the other too places the we didn’t get a feeling of value for money from the experience as a whole. In the end we left with just a tiny jar of Hot English Mustard as the kid’s were still sure they liked it and I didn’t see the point in buying anything too big. Interestingly, they did like the mustard and I have had to invest in a much larger jar as I am now sharing it.

From here we headed back into Hahndorf itself for lunch. As we had everything we needed with us except for bread Liz jumped out when we saw a bakery and arrived back with some beautiful, heavy German style rolls (apt as Hahndorf still trades heavily on it’s status as Australia’s first German settlement). We found a little park near the centre of town and then proceeded to eat in the car as the rain set in. After lunch however the rain lightened up and we were able to spend a very pleasant couple of hours wandering around.