If St Augustine is correct, this has been our best trip ever because we’ve made so many friends in this beautiful little valley.
We truly appreciate your friendship, your generosity, and your willingness to adopt a couple foreigners who don’t understand footy, who don’t eat Vegemite, and whose understanding of your language is often laughably inadequate.
Mark and Marlo (above). Our newest friends. They own Hive, the coffee shop down on the corner.
Doctors John and Margaret. Oh, how we’ll miss our coffees and conversations.
Mark and Mandy. The Doctors’ daughter and her husband. Very smart, very funny people and we love spending time with them.
Scottie. Two doors down. He is so enamoured with Jamie that he has hatched a scheme to do away with me in order to have her for himself.
The entire Mustard clan. They love Jamie and put up with me (just like lots of other people around the world).
John and his little dog Angus. Our next door neighbors. He was recently honored by the Australian government for his lifetime of good works. Let’s make it clear — it was John who was honored, not Angus.
Grant and Elizabeth. She’s South Australia’s most elegant woman. And he’s even funnier every time we get together. (I particularly like the “Meat Tray Raffle” sign over Grant’s shoulder.)
Ray and Polly (above). Our first landlords in the Barossa. And our first friends in South Australia.
Paul. Jack of all trades, and contrary to the old saying, master of all.
Debbie. The woman who comes to America to chase tornados.
Ken and Sue (above). Our former landlords. Our first friends in the Barossa. They do far too much for us and we appreciate it.
The gang at Hive. Mark and Marlo (mentioned and shown above) plus Eloise and Bobby King.
The boys at Bean Addiction. Damien, St John, and Jordon (he’s the one above who gave us a beautiful bottle of South Australian whiskey as a going away gift)
The gang at Fleur Social. Sarah and Ryan (she’s Aussie, but he’s one of those nice Canadian fellows)
The gang at Mitre 10. Carolyn, Helen, Sam and the rest.
The gang at Crowie’s. Adrian, Vaughan, and Karen.
The gang at Red Door. Lisa, Poppy, Patti and everyone else.
The gang at Darlings. Wendy, Amy, Alex and the rest.
The gang at Terry White’s. Kamal, Ella, Ranae, Sharon, Megan, Jane and epecially Vanessa who deserves a special call-out for introducing Jamie to the wildlife rescue sanctuary.
The gang at Office National. We’d never be able to survive here for this many months without Jimmy, Keegan, and Liz.
There really are just too many to call out individually. Our apologies to anyone we accidentally omitted.
See all of you as soon as we can schedule another trip back to the Barossa.
Great photos and mentions.