thedickosgapyear

For a small island Mauritius punches well above its weight for two things – long, slow queues at the airport immigration counter and beautiful red Indian Ocean sunsets. Actually, Mauritius no doubt has many other beautiful and worthwhile attractions, but having come to the end of our Africa visit we decided to just enjoy the beach and the pool and leave the rest. If there is a world-renowned shopping mall, or an escalator direct to the Lost City of Atlantis, we apologise and will be back to look at it one day, but for this trip if we were 50 paces from the pool it was too far. The Sofitel, on the west coast of the island near a place rather quaintly named Flic en Flac, takes its French heritage quite seriously, and is populated mostly ... read more

Actually, the title of this short post should be “The Smoke that Thunders”. The Thunder that Smokes was the situation with our digestive systems after 4 nights (and a total of 32 courses plus snacks) at the fantastic Dulini Lodge. The Smoke that Thunders, or Victoria Falls, as it was renamed by the explorer/missionary/anti-slavery campaigner/all-round do-gooder Dr Livingstone, is an amazing sight on the Zambezi River between Zambia and Zimbabwe. We spent two nights on the Zimbabwe side of the falls, and have been amazed equally by the stunning scenery of the Falls and the amateurish service at the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge where we stayed. But the falls first. They are one of the seven natural wonders of the world, although I don’t know who made the list up since it doesn’t even include Bondi ... read more

We thought we were unlucky, having left Sydney an hour late and, after doing the customs queue shuffle for an hour in Johannesburg, we stupidly got ripped off by some guy at the airport “helping” us to catch our onwards flight. We thought we were unlucky, that is, until we found out that Qantas cancelled all flights the following day due to a strike. Then it rained for a day and a half. Then, when we finally got a clear day to visit Table Mountain the cable car was closed due to high winds. Despite all this though we’ve thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Cape Town, which is a very pretty city brimming with history. We have stayed in an apartment in a gated community near the V & A Waterfront. The Victoria and Alfred Waterfront ... read more

Marree was a big time railway town up to 1980. About 400 kilometres south of Oodnadatta and 685 north of Adelaide, it was firstly a terminus, then an important stop on the Great Northern Railway from Port Augusta to Alice Springs. Then it was a break-of-gauge station when the standard-gauge railway arrived. It was a serious railway and service town. In 1980, though, the railway line was re-routed a few hundred kilometres to the west. When the last train left Marree for Oodnadatta, the locals, desperate to keep the railway going and in a just-slightly-futile protest, kept uncoupling the carriages so the train couldn’t depart. It’s apparently been all downhill since then. Marree now has a pub, a general store and a collection of rusty old Commonwealth Railways locomotives gathered around the remains of the railway ... read more

We’ve had a mixed few days since our last instalment, with some very touristy activities and some food for thought about the struggles and sacrifices to settle these areas in the first place. Longreach is a very nice little town on the Thomson River, now a little bit more prosperous after we visited all its attractions. Some of these attractions are well known – the Qantas Founders Museum, for example with everything from their original hangar to a 747, which, rather sadly, although it was able to land on Longreach’s short airstrip, will never take off again. We thought the museum was quite well done, with lots of interesting exhibits and good audio-visual stuff as well. The focus is on the early days and the two barnstorming WW1 pilots who started the whole thing, rather than ... read more