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Newsletter #10 - August 23-28, 1959 |
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Newsletter No, 10
August 21st to August 28, 1959 Mailed from Sydney, Australia Hello again, [August 23] Here we are in the city of Adelaide. We arrived after 6 A.M. and were really sleepy. Our hotel cannot give us a room until 10 A.M. so I guess we'll have to miss church again. This really disappoints me as I wanted to hear Dr. M. Lohe who is the President General of all Lutheran Churches in Australia and was recommended to me by Australian Pastor Held who spent some time in York at St. Matthew's Church in early June. After we checked into our very cold room, we washed and slept until 2 P.M. and then walked about the city enjoying its beauty. Adelaide is a well planned city with broad, straight streets and avenues set at right angles. We were told that the city has been planned so that the beaches and hill resorts are no more than a half hour's trip from the capital. We visited their very complete and unusual Botanical Gardens with its two lakes and many wadding birds. We also saw the old buildings of the University of Adelaide and got a small peak at the Government House which is almost surrounded by high shrubbery and, of course, has closed and guarded gates. We also saw many other lovely government buildings and statuary during our long walk. Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, is in the center of the sheep and cattle-grazing country. Tomorrow we will begin our four-day Pioneer Bus Tour through more of South Australia. We leave at 8:45 A.M. [August 24] on a bus with twenty-three other tourists. As we leave the outskirts of Adelaide, we see that the city has many industrial sites and some of its industries include the manufacture of munitions, motor bodies and furniture. We pass through a newlydeveloped suburban city called Elizabeth which has a well-planned, modern shopping center and a low, rambling, modern hotel. Driving along, we begin to see many vineyards. However, the grapes are not growing nor are there any leaves on the vines and all we saw was the wood of the grapevines being pruned. We are driving through the rich looking land of the Barossa Valley which has an almost 100% German population and wine-making is their main occupation. This section of Australia produces nearly 80% of the total production of wine in this country. Vine growing and wine-making is one of the greatest employers of labor in any primary industry and it is interesting to find out that, wherever grapes are grown, the areas are very closely populated and there are many prosperous towns as many other industries derive benefit by supplying the manifest needs such as machinery, casks, cases, bottles, etc. So with wheat and wool, wine is another one of Australia's greatest primary industries. |
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Our tour today includes a trip through a winery. The one we visited is called, "The House of Seppelt". This trip was most educational and we had a lovely German maiden as a guide who explained each process most thoroughly. Vintage in Australia commences toward the end of February with the processing of grapes from the irrigated areas. Later, about the second week in March, the grapes from the non-irrigated areas are processed. The few weeks in which the grapes are gathered are days of intense activity, for not only are the grapes to be crushed, but the juice must also be converted under hygienic conditions into sound wine. The crushed grapes are pumped into tanks in the fermenting cellar. Here, carefully cultured pure yeast is added which attacks the natural sugar of the grapes and converts it into alcohol and a gas called carbon dioxide which bubbles out of the liquid. Each variety of grapes has characteristics of its own. Therefore, for each type of wine, a special variety of grape is selected. After fermentation has been completed and the grape pulp and juice has been fortified by adding spirit, this mixture is allowed to settle for about three weeks. During this settling period, the large particles of skin and pulp will settle to the bottom of the large vats. At the end of this time, the clearer wine is pumped off and this step is called racking. The sediment which is left is distilled to recover the spirit which it contains. The wine at this stage is quite bright, but to insure that the product is perfectly clean and brilliant before it is stored for maturing, it is passed through a filter. This filter is made of cotton and asbestos pads and by passing through this filter the wine deposits any fine particles that remained in it. The wine is now put into casks and placed in storage for some years. This is where the maturing of the wine takes place. During this long maturing period, the wines are constantly checked in the laboratory by chemists and the blender to see that the wine development is normal. Later, the wine is blended and combined until it is perfectly balanced in color, flavor, aroma and all the other characteristics which a wine drinker looks for. The importance attached to the maturing of wine is great as often wines have shown great promise and then have been spoiled by either under- or over-maturing. In general, the Australian wines age more rapidly than others due largely to climatic conditions and the lower tannin content of their grapes. A very important thing we found out today was a substance called cream of tartar which is present in all grapes. This is a by-product of many wineries and is made from the deposits on the wall of the tanks and the grape skins. This by-product is used in the manufacture |
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of baking powder, self-raising flour and health salts. It is also interesting to know that throughout the world, the wine industry provides the only source of cream of tartar and tartaric acid. Still another by-product of the wine industry is grape seed oil. This is similar to olive oil in appearance and is suitable for culinary purposes and ideal for certain types of paint manufacture. As a nice ending to the German maiden's complete history of wine making, she treated us all to as much wine of our choice as we cared to drink and we also received a small souvenir bottle to take with us. Meredith and I had Port and it was delicious. After our trip through the winery, we pass more acres of vineyards and stay overnight at the Hotel Barmera which overlooks a wonderful lake and gardens and is a resort place. Our second day [August 25] of tour goes through very flat country where you see scrub gum trees by the thousands and the sparse growth in most of this area is valueless. Toward late afternoon we follow the "Lazy Murray River" which is a total of 1,609 miles long and we begin to see some irrigation where orange, lemon and grapefruit trees are grown. We take a two-hour trip on a river boat on the Murray River and our tour is televised as we get off the bus and enter the river boat, which is quite new. This filming will be on Australia's T.V., but I fear you won't see us on your sets. They took quite a lot of film footage and pictured us going under the bridge and near the dam or "weir , as they call a dam. We stay at Hotel Murray in Mildura tonight and after our dinner, we go to the movies and see Ingrid Bergman in "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness", which we both enjoyed. We are on our third day [August 26] of tour and now know all of the members of the bus. They are all quite anxious to know all about the United States such as our television, our prices, cars, etc. There is a most interesting Latin Professor and his wife who are from England and we occasionally have our meals with them. Another couple is from New Zealand and the remaining nineteen are Australians. Having so many breakfasts, teas, lunches, teas again and dinner, we sooner or later eat with almost everyone at some meal. Today we travel through much scrub area and, once in a while, we do see miles of irrigated areas where vegetables and citrus orchards are grown. However, for the most part, the scenery is quite dull. Our day is made a little more interesting by swapping stories on bits of interests from our respective areas. Some of the words we used differently are candy which they call lollies or bon-bons; dresses which they call frocks; vacations which they call holidays; druggists or pharmacists which they call chemists; desserts they call sweets; table napkins they call serviettes; baby diapers they call napkins; biscuits they call scones; cookies they call biscuits; dams they call weirs; etc., etc. |
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Tonight we stay at the Palace Hotel In Echuca. This is really a rather drab, cold hotel with poor accommodations. After dinner and a walk to view this small town, we assemble in the lobby and have a good time singing. We learn the popular Australian Ballad, "Waltzing Matilda". One of the tourists showed some good card tricks before we retired. When we get to our room, it seems encircled in wood smoke and we have a little trouble sleeping, but by morning we awaken with smoke almost choking us. We discovered the smoke is from the kitchen and we are glad to get up and start moving about. Our tour today [August 27] takes us into the State of Victoria and we begin to see much better land for farming. The pasture land is much greener and we see hills and mountains -- at last, after three days on flat land. We are beginning to see Wattle trees again and they are what we call Acacia trees and are most beautiful with their lovely yellow flowers. Many other blossom trees are showing their shades of pinks and reds and the countryside begins to look like ours in early spring. We have dinner at a lovely hotel in Bendigo and tea and scones in the afternoon in a nice wooded area where a man from Holland has erected a lovely log cabin among huge pines. After more miles of nice farmland, we arrive at Melbourne which is a very large city. We get a room at the Federal Hotel on Collins Street. This is the street which is the pride of Melbourne and it is a broad, tree-lined street with shops, cafes and old historical buildings located on it. One of the outstanding old buildings we've seen from the exterior and interior is "The English-Scottish and Australian Bank, Ltd." which is Gothic Revival period of architecture and is a gorgeous structure. The interior is of the Byzantine influence and has a mosaic floor done in many colored pieces of marble to harmonize with the other decorations. Today [August 28] we are going to book our hotels and plane reservations up to Cairo as we have been discovering many times we cannot leave a place when we are ready because of limited plane space. We will leave Brisbane in two weeks and fly to Darwin for a two-day stay and then go back to Singapore again for another three-day visit as we could not see some of their places of interest in the one-and-a-half days the ship was there. Later we fly on to Saigon for a few days and then Cambodia's capital, Phnom-Penh until we can get a plane to Siem Reap where we travel by bus to see the unusual ruins and treasures at Angkor Wat. From Cambodia, we fly to Bangkok, Thailand, then Rangoon, Burma and on to Calcutta and New Delhi, etc. As far as we know now, we are pretty well following our planned itinerary as far as mailing dates are concerned even though we've added Saigon and Cambodia to our plans. Forgot to tell you earlier that we saw a bird very much like the ostrich several times while coming through the Murray Highway plains section. They are called the "emu" and are very large and can move quite fast. Usually, we'd see groups of four to ten at a time. |
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Since we can't get a tour out of Melbourne for Sydney until Thursday, it means we'll be in this city for a week. This will cut out time down in Sydney and Melbourne, but they say those are the trials of traveling. Tomorrow starts another newsletter week, so we'll close for this week. We're still happy, but quite cold as you never really warm up here in Australia this time of year. Our love, Charlotte & Meredith |