While Not Working

The Railway Museum at Milang inhabited a collection of old carriages overlooking Lake Alexandrina. Staffed entirely by volunteers, it celebrated all things light rail: the forgotten little railways that hauled things between mines and around industrial sites without any of the kudos and fanfare of the suburban and intercity networks.   In a fine example of procrasti-snacking, we took ourselves to the Railway Museum for afternoon tea rather than face sorting through stuff in the storage shed. A group of jolly geriatric hikers had just finished scoffing their scones and vacated their seats for us.  "They all live on the other side of the Peninsula," confided the walk leader. "But I live on this side so I organised a walk and made them come over the hill."   "We walk once a month," chimed in a tiny little lady with a big backpack. "But the walks get slower as we get older."  Not that they looked particularly slow to me as they bounced down the steps...

Back in April last year we stayed in McLaren Vale with a little white dog who had a penchant for playing Fetch with lemons. Now we're back in McLaren Vale and the dog is all of a sudden far too mature to chase lemons or indeed fruit of any kind even if the blood orange tree is loaded with fruit. He's become a senior dog, and he's been joined by a junior dog 'for company' although I suspect Senior would frequently be more than happy with a peaceful solitary life. Junior's erstwhile puppy lurks just under his skin: he regularly runs bonkers circles around the living room furniture and has an obsession with toes. Should I be silly enough to walk around barefoot Junior risks trampling in his efforts to lick my toes. I wash my feet regularly* but Junior doesn't care: socks and shoes are the only defense against his persistence.  Not that wearing socks and shoes is a hardship, given the miserable weather outside. Rain and wind has beaten Australia's southern c...

I have expectations when riding my bike. If I put in the effort to ride up a hill, I expect that I will enjoy a commensurate downhill, preferably of a gradient such that I can sit back and enjoy the view without excessive worry about tedious things like tight corners, loose gravel, or wearing out my brakes.  None of this happened on the Crafers Bikeway yesterday. I planned for the best kind of downhill: one where the uphill bit was achieved by car.  After a convivial lunch in Mt Barker Roger dropped me off at Crafers and I pedaled happily into a blustery wind, anticipating 27 km of downhill all the way to my front door. Actually, I pedalled in circles first because it took me a while to find the way out of the car park, but we won't talk about that will we? The ride started with gentle sweeping curves along the old Mt Barker Road. I passed a little boy zooming along on a balance bike. Then I passed his father, peeing quietly beside the car while shouting "Junior! Come back!...

Many years ago I asked a brand new family member, born and raised in China and newly arrived in Australia, what she first noticed was different about her new country. I expected an answer about food/people/habits and customs. "I can see the edge of the world," she said.  "I can see that line where the earth ends and the sky begins." That would be the horizon, which for her whole life had been a concept well hidden behind smog. I woke up in little old Adelaide, on the edge of the Southern Ocean, after six weeks in a world where at sunset the sun sank slowly into a fuzzy purple haze, and on a clear day distant objects had a haze over them not dissimilar to the fog on your eyes after you've swum underwater in a chlorinated pool without goggles.  I went for a walk along Henley Beach while we waited to move into our next house sit. I could see the edge of the world.

Well, I better get a wriggle on with this, seeing as I'm already home and struggling from post-holiday discombobulation.   We had a late flight out of Seoul so there was time for one last little bit of exploring.  We caught the train out to Dongdaemun History and Culture Park, discovering all these interesting galleries and museums that we no longer had to time to appreciate. We walked around and appreciated the futuristic architecture instead.   And one of us went for a ride on a chair. The airport bus took us all the way out to the airport lickety split, no trouble at all, and I even got a peek at the canal that South Korea had to build because Seoul lost its access to the sea when the border with North Korea got drawn right down the middle of the Han River estuary. Incheon Airport is on an island, reached by impressive bridges.  The tide was out.           Incheon Airport was suitably shiny, with impressive orchids and shiny travelators, a...

 On our last day in South Korea I left Roger to enjoy his morning cups of tea/coffee and walked over to the Deoksogung Palace , just past the Seoul City Hall.  Deoksugung was used as a palace after all the other palaces were burned down by the Japanese in 1592.  It was then the Imperial Palace of the Korean Empire in 1897 and expanded with buildings of both Korean and Western style.  Fire, Japanese colonisation, and demotion to a mere park happened, and then a period of restoration started in 1947-48 and there I was in 2025 wandering around appreciating all the beautiful buildings. Outside the palace walls a huge crowd gathered for an open-air celebration of Easter Sunday, belting out rousing Korean worship songs at the top of their voices, aided by a very effective sound system.  Inside the palace grounds, the music provided a rousing and vaguely patriotic sound track to the centuries of history and beautifully decorated traditional buildings. Traditional guard...