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Published: April 27th 2024
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So today we’ll be heading west into South Australia and on to the wine valley town of Clare. Compared to yesterday it’s going to be a relatively relaxed drive of only a tad over four hundred kilometres.
We stop to stretch our legs at the thriving South Australian Riverland town of Renmark, best known for its prolific production of irrigated oranges and grapes. The ANZAC Day memorials set up along the attractive riverfront include thousands of crocheted red and purple poppies. It seems the purple ones are intended to recognise the “sacrifices” made by the animals that got drawn into the various conflicts. We read that it’s estimated that eight million animals lost their lives in World War I alone - horses, donkeys, dogs ….. and pigeons. I’d always thought of a “sacrifice” as being voluntary; I’m not sure too many of these poor creatures had much choice in the matter. It seems the pigeons were used to carry messages, and were apparently sometimes the only reliable (?) method of getting important communications through … unless of course they got blasted out of the sky by the enemy in the process, which these numbers suggest happened all too frequently.
We stop for a bite of lunch at the historic river town of Morgan. We read that the port here was established in the late 1800s to lure traffic away from those dastardly Victorians who’d previously monopolised river trade from their own establishment at Echuca. Morgan subsequently became the lower Murray’s busiest port and remained so until the arrival of the railways resulted in a sharp and ultimately permanent drop off in business.
We leave the river and head further west to the town of Eudunda. One of its main claims to fame is as the birthplace of novelist Colin Thiele, whose works included “Storm Boy”, “Blue Fin” and the “Sun on the Stubble”. His name features prominently on the town’s impressive silo artwork.
We head out for dinner to a restaurant in Clare’s main street. I’m not happy. I’m not even a little bit happy. I’ve spent the last couple of hours watching my beloved Blues play on my iPad … and they lost …. narrowly …. and had a lot of luck (and dodgy umpiring decisions!) go against them. Issy senses I’m ready to kill someone and I might not be too fussy about who it
is. Quick to the front of the queue is the restaurant receptionist - it seems that they’ve misplaced our “confirmed” booking, and they don’t have any available tables. Issy is now fearing for this young lady’s safety. My beloved steps into the fray and takes over the negotiations, whilst I’m consigned to the cheap seats and instructed to “get a little less grumpy”. The staff are all apologies. A table is found, but it’s on the cold rooftop, and it’s not overly well suited to dining - it’s small and high, and we’re perched on stools. The staff sense that all is not well, and we spend the next several minutes being shuffled between a series of equally unsuitable tables - too high, too low, too cold, right under a heater so too hot. Our drinks turn up. I’ve ordered a lemon, lime and bitters. I’m not quite sure where the lime and bitters got to, but sipping on raw lemon juice certainly isn’t doing a lot to soothe my frazzled temper. How much worse can this get. The food turns up, and it’s actually not too bad. I’m even starting forget why I was feeling grumpy. Hang on, let’s
Curio statue, Marrabel
Curio was a notoriously difficult horse not get too carried away. What was I saying before about those ##$&*@ umpires……. I suppose there’s always next week.
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
We are just two grumpy old men...
Next to Canterbury Cathedral is a large iron statue of a horse commemorating the 6 million horses killed in battles of WWI. I felt so sad. Thanks to the jeep fewer horses were killed in WWII.