17-18/10/21Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee: Port Lincoln to Cowell to Adelaide

-

I apologise to the koalas for complaining about their night time noise.  The koalas on Mikkira Station couldn't hold a candle to the cacophony of drunken conversation and domestic argument that reigned in the Cowell Caravan Park last night, although according to the Park manager all the real action had happened the night before and this was but a mediocre encore which settled quickly after a stage left appearance by SAPol.

This was all a bit of a shock after our pleasant day exploring the various teeny towns as we drove north up the east coast of the Eyre Peninsula.

Views across the Sleaford Meer on our way back from Mikkira.

Port Lincoln from Winters Hill lookout, which gives a huge view across Boston Harbour.  Looking west, the sandhills near Coffin Bay were visible.

Beautiful little town #1: Tumby Bay

Beautiful little town #2: Port Neill

Beautiful little town #3: Arno Bay

And there we were in Cowell last night, listening to the rabble rousers and counting Harley Davidsons in place of slumber-inducing sheep.

If you ride a big shiny black and silver Harley, wear a black vest with various antisocial patches on it, and nurse a sore head from yesterday/last night/this morning's carousing, it's fair to assume that you want to project a tough guy image. Trouble was, a lot of these guys reminded me of Tweedledum and Tweedledee in leather. They were kind of old, with skinny legs and round bellies. Some of them had trouble swinging their legs over their bikes due to hips and knees not working as well as they might. They had big grey beards and grey mullets. In between macho conversations liberally sprinkled with f-words and derogatory references to SAPol they could be heard on their phones assuring someone that they would pick up a litre of milk before they got home, or asking each other 'how do I send a friend request on Facebook?'  Don't get me wrong: they sported letters for an organisation which has been considered militant and has been associated with activities of a flexibly legal nature. I would never call them T-dum or T-dee to their face, and I sent Roger off to do the washing up in the camp kitchen which had become their unofficial HQ.  I just couldn't stop thinking of the Tweedle D's whenever I looked at them.


 

The ferry takes just over two hours to cross the Spencer Gulf from Lucky Bay to Wallaroo.  The T-dums and T-dees all went  to sleep or went up into the fresh air, and we settled in to watch the sea splash past under our feet while Roger went upstairs at intervals to check whether at any time in the voyage we would be totally out of sight of land. (Spoiler: nope).

Here comes our ride.

This was one time when we needed forward gear to work, and it did.  Well done car.

Watching the splash.  Quite mesmerising.

Land?  Yes, sadly.  He was looking forward to being all at sea.


Lunch view at Wallaroo, watching the ferry turn around and head back to Lucky Bay.

Now we're in Adelaide, and let me tell you it was a shock driving along a freeway into a city after all our months out in the boondocks.  Our Caravan Park backs onto the drain river Torrens, along which we can walk to get to Woolworths.  Even better, we are under the flight path for the airport, which has sent Roger into raptures of delight and scurries for FlightRadar so he can check on all the planes that go overhead.

The river Torrens, behind our home for the night.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

23/12/21 The Dinosaurs of Newtown

-
Image
Some time in the months before Christmas, somewhere near Newtown, a shop had a sale of inflatable Christmas dinosaurs. Lots of people thought that a large inflatable dinosaur was just what they needed for their 2021 outdoor festive decor, so they bought the dinosaurs and then discovered that, once inflated, they were very big. Not as big as a real dinosaur would have been, obviously, but certainly big enough to be inconvenient if you happen to live in a trendy little terrace house with a handkerchief of front lawn and second story verandah almost the size of half a vegemite sandwich.   Dinosaur #1: taking up all the available verandah space I imagine that at this stage the dinosaur purchasers may have considered the size of the dinosaur (inflated or otherwise) in relation to their rubbish bin, but were likely prevented from this course of action by children who, enamoured of dinosaurs, had welcomed the creature into the Christmas fold and called it something festive like Rudolph, o...
Read more

Minor Adventures on Quiet Days

-
Image
 Roger took himself off on the train to South Australia for a week, so BD and I decided to have some adventures of our own, albeit not as exciting as riding the interstate train to Adelaide and getting to have an up-close stickybeak at the flooded Murray River. We took ourselves off to the Ormond Lookout to watch the sun set instead. As did rather more people than what we had anticipated. Mobs, in fact. We found a patch of dirt grass and settled in.  "I'm gonna come back here!" declared BD.  She wriggled around a bit: our patch of grass was on quite a slope and she kept sliding out of her shorts.  "With a chair," she added. In between admiring other people's dogs and taking observational lessons in 101 Ways To Take A Selfie, we watched the sun trundle slowly toward the horizon. No sunset is complete without a picnic. There she goes. Further down the beach, a container ship puttered across the horizon under the gaze of a lone beach-sitter.  And us, of course...
Read more

Quiet Life with Cat

-
Image
 After all the excitement of hospital stays, Emergency Department visits, and trying to balance the cost-benefit ratio of hospital cafeteria food, life became a little more settled.  After a week of blessedly boring drug levels BD was given a reprieve from daily blood tests and we, therefore, were released from daily drives to the nearest Melbourne Pathology lab.  We did some laundry and did some cleaning and I hopped on my bicycle and went for a ride or two.  Not that the weather was very conducive to enjoyable and relaxing bike riding, but I went anyway. All was fine at Albert Park, where the swans put on a good show, playing happy families all across the playing fields.  But that didn't last for long. Back at home the new cat let his crazy out to play.  He zoomed up and down the hallway in the middle of the night; scared the bejeebers out of us by jumping on the sound bar and blasting us with high volume TV; hid under chairs and batted at our ankles as w...
Read more