Category: Travels for Fun
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THE LARGEST TEMPERATE FOREST ON EARTH
On the last hour of the last day of our double crossing of the Nullarbor Plain, Padma and I drove real slowly. We had no hurry to reach the dumpy motel room in Norseman that awaited us. The sun was getting low in the sky when we encountered a significant change in landscape. The scrubby, treeless Nullarbor Plain was transitioning into the Great Western Woodlands. In a country of superlatives, the Great Western Woodlands stands out as it is the largest intact temperate (that is, Mediterranean climate) woodland remaining on Earth.…
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FROM STREAKY TO BORDER VILLAGE
Padma and I slowed down our pace once we reached the Far West Coast of South Australia. We drove a mere 590 kms from Streaky Bay to Border Village on the SA/WA border as we didn’t want to miss the sights. From sheep grazing in sparse paddocks, to wide-open rangeland with no start or end, to the longest uninterrupted line of sea cliffs in the world and finally to a roadhouse with a giant kangaroo holding a jar of Vegemite. We detoured off the Eyre Highway to the Head of Bight…
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THE STREAKS OF STREAKY BAY
In 1802 Captain Matthew Flinders sailed into a bay on the current day South Australian coastline and noticed how the light reflecting off the seaweed created streaks in the water. He named the place Streaky Bay. After driving all day from Adelaide, Padma and I arrived at Streaky Bay as the sun was setting. We were welcomed with abundant streaks of colour on an evening when there wasn’t even a whisper of a breeze. We stretched our legs and walked out to the end of the jetty and watched the final…
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NORTH OF GOYDER’S LINE
Back in 1865 a surveyor known as George Goyder got on his horse and traversed 3200 kms across South Australia. When he got home he drew a line across the state. He figured to the south of his line farmers could get enough rainfall to allow them to grow crops. To the north, he felt it was just too prone to drought and you’d best stick to grazing animals. Just after Goyder drew his line, South Australia had ample rains and farmers said ‘bugger that line’ and started planting to the…
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THE NULLARBOR CROSSING
While living in Europe, Padma and I missed one aspect of Australia: the emptiness. There is no emptiness in Western Europe, certainly not on the highways. So with the arrival of the cooler Autumn weather, Padma and I decided to experience some good old Aussie emptiness. And there’s no better place for that than the Nullarbor Plain of Western Australia and South Australia. So we packed our bags and loaded our Toyota Hybrid and started driving East … destination Melbourne (3500 kms) to visit our sons, Joseph and Xander. The Nullarbor…
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ALL BY OURSELVES.
I finally got that long-awaited gin and tonic. Or rather three gin and tonics. The Qatar Airways flight attendant keep bringing them to me. Maybe he sensed the cloud of stress above me, the mild stench of anxiety surrounding me or the furrows of worry on my face. With each G&T all of those emotions were replaced with just one: relief. We are on our way home to Australia. After three months of living in limbo with the constant fear of not getting home as the Australian Government played with our…
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A WANDER IN THE MOSELLE
In 14 days from now Padma, Joseph and I are hoping to be sipping some gin and tonics on our flight home to Perth. We’re still not confident we’ll be on that flight, but to date we haven’t been bumped again. Australian politicians are proving to be inept at doing anything to get home 30,000+ Aussies scattered around the world. They talk about us and do a few things for the optics, but by and large tens of thousands of Aussies remain stranded overseas. Padma and I try to maintain our…
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THE CASTLE AT JUNCTION 36
Castello di Mesocco Padma and I were heading north on the A13, minding our own business and in no particular hurry to get anywhere. It was one of those unreliable Alpine mornings — the cloud that had filled the valley overnight was lifting off the forest in slow white ropes, thinning as it climbed, so that the mountains kept revealing themselves and then thinking better of it. We rounded a bend and got a Wow! moment. There, on a wooded hilltop hard against the motorway, was a castle. Not a picture-postcard…
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ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER VALLEY
Ticino is a canton of valleys. They come down out of the Lepontine Alps towards Lake Maggiore like the fingers of a spread hand – Bavona, Maggia, Verzasca, Leventina – each one within an hour of the next, and each one, somehow, its own small country. The day before, our friend Hans had driven us up the Bavona: a valley of stone, of hamlets wedged in behind boulders the size of houses, and a hundred metres of white water falling at Foroglio. On our second day in the Italian-speaking Swiss canton…
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