TV-Tour 15.10.2012

Katharina picked me up in Adelaide in our rental car in the morning and we drove out to Gawler, where we had been for a show 2 months ago. But as it is with shows, you don’t really get to see much except for the show grounds. So we spend some time strolling around Gawler and had lunch before we left for Freeling. Gawler is very small, but looks like a Western Town fresh out of a cheesy movie. Various shops have items from the McLeod’s Daughters TV show on display. We saw Stevie’s wedding dress, for example ;)

Since the farm where they shot the show is in the middle of nowhere and hard to find, we stopped at the tourist information in Gawler and asked for directions. The farm house is a bed and breakfast now and they are a bit sensitive to German tourists showing up to have a look at it, so when the lady at the information point asked whether we had booked a room, of course we said yes and she was kind enough to give us maps and tell us how to get to the farm. It was only a ten minute drive and we found the main gate right away. It was closed. We decided to go for a little walk first before trying to get to the farm. The Hills around Gawler are really beautiful and we were extremely lucky with the weather. After we worked up the courage, we climbed through the fence and went on a rather long march to the farm. It was super funny because we were so scared that we were going to get in trouble for trespassing and in the end it turned out that nobody was even there. We decided not to get too close to the main house, in case there was CCTV or an alarm or whatever, but we took pictures of the house and sheds from not too far away. After a thousand photos were taken, we went back to the gate and the car, which we left right in front of the gate. We would be totally useless as criminals as we didn’t even have sense enough to leave the car somewhere not quite as obvious. When we were almost back we saw a group of big, big kangaroos hopping around in the adjacent field. This was a nice little surprise because they don’t have too many of those in that area. Once we were safely back on the legal side of the fence, we took some more pictures of the gate and of a well that they used in the show (this is really random, sorry).

On the way back, we took a little detour to a town called One Tree Hill. I had seen the street sign when I drove to the Gawler show with Mark in August but failed to take a good photo out of the truck. Since we were on our own and in no particular hurry, we stopped and I got another dozen photos of the town’s “Welcome to One Tree Hill” sign. For those of you who don’t speak pop culture, the reason why I was so keen on getting a photo of the One Tree Hill street sign is that there’s an American TV show with the very same name. One Tree Hill, South Australia, is in no way related to that show, but it’s funny and cool anyways, at least when you’re a TV nerd like me. 

Another thing that you see when you drive from Gawler to Mount Barker through the Adelaide Hills (instead of taking the route via Adelaide) are the remnants of the World Equestrian Games cross country course from some fifty or so years ago. The starting box and some of the fences have been left on both sides of the road. Again, this means nothing to most people but as an eventer that’s at least a little exciting ;)

Back at Austins Peak (Mark’s place) I got to see “my” horses again. Coolio, Dennis and Favorit had gotten out of quarantine while I was traveling and it was nice to see them again after more than two months. They were really excited to see me, as were the others. Although that might have had something to do with the bananas and carrots I gave them.