Blogs from South Australia, Australia, Oceania

We have had a good week getting here. After leaving Canberra, we drove to Wagga Wagga and then across some rather remote and boring countryside of ploughed paddocks, wheat stubble and no sign of life until we finally came to the pretty town of Tocumwal and the Murray River. The countryside was much more interesting once we crossed the river into Victoria. We had a look around favourite shops at Echuca and on then once to to Daylesford. Though it was cool there, it's always a nice area to visit - my favourite as always being Kyneton where I haunted the knitting shop and a couple of very nice gift shops. We had a couple of nights in the caravan park at Daylesford and drove around all the pretty little towns in the vicinity. We'd heard ... read more

I remember the first time I traveled internationally without anyone to help me, I took my little brother to London for a 10 day vacation. London being in a friendly English speaking country and therefore a low stress destination. I did meticulous research for that trip. I read a travel guide, bought a city map and I even looked up the layouts for the Heathrow airport so I could find the public transport area of the airport. My arrival into Adelaide for the first time really reminded me about how far I have come in ironing familiarity into my travel psyche. I took the Overland train into Adelaide from Melbourne and arrived at the Interstate train station around 6:30pm and by the time I got my backpack and hunted down a free map from information it ... read more

Moving on… Port Broughton is an old favourite, and we felt we were in familiar surrounds when we arrived at the caravan park. The trip westward across Yorke Peninsula was short (about 120 kms), but it was enough to give Geoff apoplexy – 24.8 lts/100kms was the best we could do against the wind (read - cyclone). Thankfully the wind abated (mostly) and it was relatively pleasant on the west coast. Geoff and Marg got the fishing gear out and walked down to the local pier to catch a feed for dinner… it was a good thing that we emptied the wallet at the Port Victoria fish shop, as the fish were not biting where Geoff and Marg were. They were biting 50 metres closer to the beach from where G had picked, but what a ... read more

I've been home for the last 3 days with the flu, perfect time to work out our itinerary. So here it is...We'll hopefully have 5 nights in KL before the China trip. Yeow! :) excited.... read more

We’ve spent this week on the Eyre Peninsula. This is 200km west of Adelaide, a large triangular south-facing peninsula with lots of sheep and wheat production. Whyalla is South Australia’s 2nd largest city due mostly to the steel mill there, backed up by more iron ore exports. We went on a tour of the steel mill, but, unfortunately, were not able to see a steel pour. They convert coal to coke as well for the steel making process and we saw a red hot coke pour which was really impressive. The site and the volumes handled are immense. Weather wasn’t the best with wind and rain, but the campground was superb. We then headed south to Port Lincoln, at the tip of the peninsula. On the way passed through Cowell which we’ll have to come back ... read more