Barossa nova

Off to the Barossa Valley in Moyra's estate car, a godsend really as rental costs a bomb and then there's petrol on top of that. It's an hour's drive north east of Adelaide. I drive straight to the hotel, The Louise (the focus of the story I'm researching) passing through villages as diversely named as Greenock and Nuriootpa. It's a real struggle to get my head round place names here. They were tagged on by settlers to create a link to home, but have no real meaning in terms of the location. When you think of Dartmouth, for example, it's so called because it's at the mouth of the River Dart. Here the name is meaningless. That's just one example, it's everywhere. I admit I love it when an indigenous name is kept, and you find out why it's so called and you think yes, that makes sense, given the setting. Many towns in the Barossa are named after friends of settlers, and in Narunda there are seven streets named after a founder's children.

Crickey The Louise is swish. I am shown to my exclusive suite, at a slight remove from the hotel because it incorporates a little garden, as well as a living room, bedroom, bathroom and dressing room. Oh and an outdoor shower, to freshen up under the sun.

The low hills are yellow gold in the late afternoon sunshine with lone trees studding the upper slopes and lush green vines swathed around the lower slopes. I go for drive then a short walk and find a Jacob's Creek plantation on some east-facing slopes, cooler apparently, and ideal for producing Riesling. Shame I can't stand the stuff.

I'm just driving up past a small national park when I see a kangaroo at the side of the road. Then a mother and a joey bouncing up the road in front of me. Kerching!

To round off my tour I find myself on a terrace overlooking the valley, for sunset, and the sun obliges with a cracking show. There's a sculpture park below and judging by the dubious nature of some of the art, sunset is probably when the work looks its best. Either that or in the pitch dark.

Slightly fearful of the prospect of dinner, or even a bar supper, at the hotel and the ensuing bill, I stop off for a takeaway pizza and chow down in front of the telly. It's funny how you go into flop mode, though, and after trying out the spa bath I collapse in my thick towelling robe, ready to call it a night, but then end up staying up until 1.30am watching a Swedish film with subtitles.

Breakfast is brought to the suite. A tray piled high with earthly delights including honey baked peaches with toasted almonds and yoghurt, and a cheese and tomato tartlet that I confess I stash away to eat at lunchtime.

Today's plan is to visit some of the big wineries, walk a bit and check out some of the other sights of the valley. Jacob's Creek, Penfolds and the like come with visitor centres and coach parks. It is fun to stand in front of the original Jacob's creek, however, and too good a photo op to miss. 

Maggie Beer is a big name in food here with cookery books, TV appearances and a whole live-work-cook philosophy to her name. She and her husband have a farm and cafe not far from The Louise and it's a nibbler's paradise. Lots of bits and bobs – jams, chutneys, olives, oils, fruits – all set out around the place to sample. Maggie presses her own olive oil and I buy a couple of bottles. The sampling works a treat.

For walks today I head to the Kaiserstuhl Conservation Park, in the hope of seeing more kangaroos. I do have a lovely walk in the spookily quiet park but don't see anything, not even another human. I see some fairly freaky seed pods (above).  Further on there's a giant cross on a hill for open-air services. They were a pious bunch, the Lutheran Germans who populated the valley originally and the churches still seem well frequented. They're certainly well kept, often boasting little screens outside with sayings of the day. I visit a giant tree that once housed an entire family the Herbigs.

Later on I have dinner with the hotel owner and am nervous. I have eaten a little meat since coming away but am not ready for a tasting menu for carnivores. I see they are offering beef cheeks. I draw the line at that and go for a la carte, which does feature chicken and ham but it's all very well sourced and organic and I decide I can live with it, particularly when a different wine is selected to complement each course and introduced at length by Peter,  the director of food and beverages.

I spend my final day in the Barossa visiting boutique wineries. it's an absolute scorcher – up to 35 degrees and too hot to do anything but dash from car to air-conditioned winery and back again. My favourite is Rockfords, in a picturesque courtyard, where I try the Black Shiraz, a fizzy red that tastes sublime. Then across the road at Charles Melton, while I'm chatting to Charlie's wife Virginia, she takes a call from one of the Australian Masterchefs, who left his Prada reading glasses behind when they were shooting there yesterday. Other little wineries I enjoy are Two Hands, and Torbreck, named after the forested area in Scotland where the winemaker worked to raise funds to travel round more European wineries.

Today's mini bush walk is round a gold rush mountain, where you can still look down into mine shafts dug by desperate prospectors in the 1860s. The mountain is a warren of old shafts so the path has been very carefully routed so you don't drop down one unexpectedly.

The back roads of the Barossa reveal unexpected sights – a cemetery in the middle of the bush, a railway crossing in the middle of nowhere, a stall selling cow manure, a curved dam nicknamed the Whispering Wall because what is whispered at one end is crystal clear at the other...

...and the place below, called Hoffnungsthal, or the Valley of Hope, a seemingly fertile valley that a group of 13 Lutheran families decided to cultivate and settle in 1847, ignoring the warnings of indigenous Peramangks who told them that the valley was prone to severe flooding. Indeed, the Peramangk name for the area was Yertalla-ngga, which means 'flooding land'. Well those settlers lost everything when the flood predictably arrived six years later. Only the Lutheran church survived.