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McLaren Vale, SA

S 35°12'58" E 138°32'55"

Wed 29 Mar - Sat 1 Apr 2006


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Wednesday 29th Mar

We needed to dump the grey water so we decided to take then Motley to Murray Bridge to do some shopping.

We chose to go on to Monarto Zoo which we had last visited in Dec 2003. We had lunch and a very pleasant bus tour of the enclosures.

The Cheetah collection has grown a lot due to the very successful breeding programme. There are four young males from last years litter of six and there are three even younger who were hand reared and who participate in a "Cheetah Experience" where small groups of people spend a couple of hours in the enclosure with a keeper and interact with the cubs. This is so popular that, even at $55 each, there are booked out until next August.

The lion collection has recently been increased to six with 4 new females, three from Auckland Zoo and one from Adelaide. They haven't settled in yet and the boys have not yet been allowed to mix with the girls.

We pressed on to McLaren Vale and booked into the caravan park so that we could visit with Jean's friend, Joy who lives in Willunga.

Thursday 30th Mar

I had a bad night, losing my dinner at some unpleasantly late hour. I felt a good deal better in the morning and managed to do some chores. Joy rang to say that she would be out all morning so we visited her in the afternoon. She was very pleased to see us and we had a long talk about life as a diabetic including tips on how to deal with dieticians and diabetic educators who don't differentiate between those with marginally elevated blood glucose from those with severe diabetes.

I also did a bit of computer training and I downloaded and installed the antivirus updates for her.

Her friend, Julie, who lives next door and who provides system support is away for weeks at a time in her new job and Joy has a few problems from time to time.

Friday 31st Mar

We went to Joy's and took her out for lunch. We went to Woodstock Winery to buy some sticky but the food was too expensive so we went back into town to The Tin Shed. The food was very good and the coffee was pretty good too. We sat and chatted well into the afternoon before we dropped Joy home.

Saturday 1st Apr

Hooray! The sale of Twin Creeks has been settled. While we didn't make enough profit to pay all the fees and rates we have had to outlay, we are happy to have liquidated this useless asset. We hope the new owners get more joy out of the property than we did.

We did some shopping and went to Joy's for lunch. I was out of it by four o'clock so we bid them our farewells and retired to the Motley.


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Created: 30/3/06 and last revised 2/4/06
Author: Robin Chalmers Copyright in all the material on this site is asserted by the author
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