Mar 2019, Broulee, NSW Once set up at Broulee (Brow Lee in local speak) we take a drive along the coast in search of oysters, nice fresh Sydney Rock oysters of which this coast is famous. We do however find … Continue reading A Search for Quays and Keys
March 2019, Port Albert, Vic Camped in Toora near Victoria’s famous Wilson’s Promontory and with the mercury hovering in the high 30’s we set off for a picnic in the rainforest at Tarra Bulga National Park. Within minutes of hitting the road a friend rang to warn us of bushfires near there. Wilson’s Prom National Park had also been closed due to bushfires… and we’d forgotten our sandwiches. Hot and stuffed and plans astray, we headed for the cool of the coast at historic Port Albert only to be confronted by a bear on a ute who’d obviously had a … Continue reading When the weather is unbearable
Australia has more winter snow than Switzerland. Think about that one, what our Alps lack in altitude they gain in area. The Ghan is the world’s longest passenger train. 1.1Kms in length. It travels between Adelaide and Darwin, a distance of 2979kms. Now that would rock you to sleep. The Murray River is the third longest navigable river in the world (from Hume Dam to Lake Alexandrina). It is the 15th longest river in the world and to residents of south eastern Australia it is more than a river, it is a spiritual being. Our capital city is not Sydney … Continue reading Oddities of Oz
Last night I was watching TV and the presenter was describing an area as being “Five Sydney Harbours!” Wherever we go tour guides love to quote their particular waterway as being “X amount of Sydney Harbours”. We hear this so … Continue reading When did Sydney Harbour become a unit of measure?
May 2018 An icy autumn morning and the bush smells fresh and clean. The Kidman Way has very little traffic but we’ve never seen so much wildlife. Kangaroos, emus and goats and plenty of dead ones too. Woody is up to his old tricks and flat out swatting flies on the windscreen with the back of his hand. This is a long straight stretch and a sign says ‘Welcome to Outback NSW’. Then my phone rings, it’s a crank call from Norway…oh for God’s sake, can’t we just go bush once in a while? Continue reading Leave me alone
My doctor asked how long we would be away and I said that I was unsure. “Oh serendipitous” he replied. A few weeks later we’re making sandwiches at a dusty roadside rest area on the Eyre Highway when a chap … Continue reading Serendipitous
We take a couple of mates out to our new favourite watering hole, the Ky West Hotel near Tongala in northern Victoria. It’s a warm day and we’re enjoying the hospitality of the pub when the farmer across the road decides to spread fertiliser. Around and round he goes and on each pass the pub is shrouded in smelly dust and visibility drops to zero. I don’t know about the quality of the soil but the barman is growing angry. Continue reading Get a load of this
It is said that the old Cornish miners of Broken Hill used to sleep sitting up, because their lungs were too damaged by lead and dust to allow them to sleep horizontally. They had traipsed up from South Australia, with their worldly goods in their wheelbarrows, after the copper ran out at Burra in the early 1880’s. Can you imagine how it must have felt pushing a wheelbarrow 350kms across semi arid land? Continue reading The Cornish Miners
July 2017 Sunshine Coast, Qld Back at our camp at Lake MacDonald after a morning tootling about the Noosa river Woody sends a bragging InstaWeather pic to Dee and she replies with the temperature in Noosa. “What? You mean that you’re just down the road?” Yes, they’ve been up ‘here’ since Friday too. We spend a lazy afternoon chatting about life, death and dump points. Continue reading Where are you?
Winter 2017 We’ve been out of TV range for the last few nights so we started watching Season 4 of A Place to Call Home (a family saga set in New South Wales). After a big night at the bowling club where we are camped we thought that we might just watch the first episode. We had awful trouble trying to remember who was on with who from the last series but what the heck. After all it had been quite a few years since we saw the last season on TV. Needless to say we fell into bed feeling … Continue reading Are We Losing It…again?
