Blogs from South Australia, Australia, Oceania

I’m up before dawn and head a few kilometres out of town to get an early morning view of the ruins of a Cobb and Co Coach House Hotel. It’s apparently famous for appearing on the front cover of the “Diesel and Oil” LP, which was released by the iconic Australian rock group Midnight Oil back in 1987. It just looks like a ruined farmhouse …. well apart from a sign pointing to stony a car park right in front of it, and another sign saying that you’re not allowed to camp. There’s absolutely no one here, and I think you’d probably have to be a slightly over-obsessed “Oils” fan to even think about setting up your tent here on the gravel, but each to their own I suppose. I was hoping to recreate the photo, ... 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

I get chatting to the motel manager over breakfast. She says that her occupancy rate’s currently well down, which she attributes almost entirely to the well publicised recent civil unrest in Alice Springs. She tells me that lots of bus tours through here have been cancelled, and even some of the scheduled Ghan services haven’t run due to lack of passengers. She says that the situation in The Alice is deplorable; gangs roaming the streets armed with guns and machetes, smashing cars and property, and injuring people. She says that the curfew has helped, as have additional police services, but it’s far from a complete solution. Hmmm. Alice Springs is our next stop, and I’m suddenly feeling relieved that we’ve opted for accommodation a few kilometres outside town. This is all incredibly sad. It seems to ... read more

Issy asks me how I slept. “OK I think“, I reply, “other than getting up in the pitch black in the middle of the night and spending ten minutes trying to find the door handle on what turned out to be a door size wall panel”. My beloved does eventually stop giggling. Such a sympathetic response …. not. And on the subject of the motel’s bathroom, the mirror above the sink‘s so far from the basin that I need a telescope to be able to see myself shaving. Fortunately I seem to survive the ordeal without too many deep wounds. On the upside, the mirror’s only so far back because the proprietors have seen fit to fill the space between the sink and the wall with a wide bench. They’ve thus managed to avoid one of ... read more

Happy Mother Day to all South African Mums! Made it back to "home"...so this morning, I spotted tons of oceanic black tips, bull sharks, greater hammerheads, scalloped hammerhead, guitar sharks, and even a grouper! But I'm getting lost, this entry is about the last top experience of one more special Australian trip! The day started early in Hobart. Uber to the airport...lounge, even small one, from Qantas was a very nice experience. Today, my lovely wife is flying Hobart-Sydney to home in Bali....it's Sunday and tomorrow she is back in the office! For me...it's lounge time in Hobart...than lounge time in Sydney...and finally lounge time in Adelaide. Let speak about the lounge time experience while flying domestically Australia! I love the decent wine, I love the decent salad bar...and those toasties machines are more than a ... read more