Blogs from Oceania - page 2

We awake to a flood of messages from extended family members back home. It seems someone thought it would be a good idea to set a car on fire and launch it into the front of a house back home in Melbourne. This wouldn’t normally generate too much family attention …. except the house was in our very own quiet middle-class residential suburban street. A panicked phone call to our son Scott, who’s house sitting for us while we’re away, confirms the house wasn’t ours, in fact he’s blissfully ignorant of the whole incident. That’s a relief. The residence involved is a fair way down the street, and we don’t know the occupants, which it seems is probably a very good thing. They were reportedly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, reluctant to talk to the press. One newspaper ... read more

Today we’ll be continuing the long slog south through outback South Australia, this time 375 kilometres to the small outback town of Woomera. We know they like opal mining out here, but it seems that's not the only thing worth digging up in this vast empty landscape. We pass a sign to the perhaps slightly quirkily named Peculiar Knob Mine, which we read is the source of some of the highest grade iron ore in the entire country. I thought Woomera was just a regular town, but it looks like it’s actually an Air Force base, which I guess could be a sort of a town. It’s all very military looking - identical style houses and two storey apartment blocks straight out of the 1950s. We’ve booked ourselves into the Eldo Hotel which sounded like a ... read more

It’s Mother’s Day, when our offspring get to shower my beloved with love and affection, and gifts … or at least they would if they were here. As I think I noted previously I thought it was Mother’s Day last Sunday, so I dutifully went out and bought my beloved a box of chocolates before I realised my mistake. Perhaps unsurprisingly they’ve all been eaten, so now it’s off to the shop at the Desert Oaks Resort here in the thriving metropolis of Erldunda, population 25, in search of another suitable offering. I’m not sure packets of chips or spare parts for caravans are quite going to cut it, but all good, my beloved insists that it’s the thought that counts. I hope she means it. Today we continue our long journey home, 500 odd kilometres ... read more

Today we start the long journey home, all two and a half thousand odd kilometres of it. And the downside of living in such a vast empty land is that there aren’t a lot of route options other than the one we used to get here. So we’re going to need to come up with things to write about that don’t just repeat what we wrote on the way up … or resort to random observations. Let’s go with the random observations … so some readers might want to stop here. We've noticed that when we’re out here in the back of beyond on near deserted roads it seems to be customary to acknowledge drivers coming the other way. You’re apparently supposed to do this by very casually lifting your index finger slowly off the steering ... read more

I walk nervously into the breakfast room expecting the usual chaos. But no, it seems bus people have finally packed up and gone, and peace and tranquility has returned … and they didn’t even break the coffee machine, or burn the place down while they were trying to work out how to use the toaster... I’m keen for Issy to see at least part of the splendour of Kings Canyon, so we set off up the path onto the south rim. It hasn’t got any less spectacular overnight … and we see another animal, the second in two days, and this one’s even a native. OK it might only be a few centimetres long, a lizard sunning itself on a rock, but when you haven’t seen a single native animal in the wild since you arrived ... read more