While Not Working

 Once upon a time there were two people and a car, and they drove their car the long way from Queensland to South Australia and then, because they couldn't help themselves, they drove from Adelaide to Sydney and back again via Melbourne.  For most of that time they only had intermittent backwards gear, and very excited they were when the car was fixed and it could reliably go forwards and backwards, whichever was required at the moment. When they were on the highway between Sydney and Melbourne they drove past a truck (one of many).  The truck flicked up a rock and bang! just like that they had another chip (one of many) in their windscreen. Not the culprit.  But similar.   'We'll get that fixed in Melbourne,' they said.  And then they forgot all about it and parked the car in the sunny driveway in Melbourne and caught the train everywhere and the next time they looked at the car the chip had turned into a crack and it was growing right across the windscree...

  Our last Fringe activity was a night tour of the old Adelaid Gaol. We learnt all kinds of interesting things at the tour of the old Adelaide Gaol, including that when the colony of SA was started, the planners didn't plan for any kind of gaol at all.  The thinking was that as this was the only colony founded by free people rather than convicts, the good citizens of the colony would all be Very Nice People and therefore a gaol would be entirely superfluous. This was not the case of course, and before long the new colony had need of somewhere secure where they could keep the colonists who weren't being as nice as they were expected to be.  With need of a quick solution, all the bad people were popped onto the good ship Buffalo and moored out to sea at Glenelg.  This solution lasted barely a year before the Buffalo was recalled to the eastern states and the pressure was on to find a more permanent solution for the problem of good citizens who persisted in be...

The owners of our house have been away bush walking.  They have bush-walked up hill and down dale as the skies opened, torrents of water poured down the mountains, and all the low lands were flooded. A week ago the weather cleared and they settled down to bush walking in beautiful weather, with the bush all squeaky clean and beautiful after the rain.  Then one little pebble rolled the wrong way under one bush walking boot, and now our home owners are sampling the emergency and fracture care amenities in their nearest hospital.  One has a broken ankle and the other is running around doing all the worrying and organising, as you do when a broken ankle happens a long way from home.  "Don't worry about the house and the cat!"  We said.  "Make whatever plans you need to and we'll fit in around you."  Then we ran off in a big hurry to make plans A through to Z for cover all eventualities and now we're in limbo, waiting to hear what happens with a broken ankl...

We've been enjoying the last gasp of summer and getting out and about to enjoy Adelaide and its environs.  Belair is beautifully positioned on the hill with easy access to the beach, the city, and the Hills.  The Fringe Festival is still on and we're sampling the smorgasbord of cultural entertainment that is on offer. We went to a comedy show, where Roger was theatrically 'killed' by a very comical man.   And we ate a picnic tea surrounded by festive crowds (well spaced out, of course!), entertainers, and spruikers.  Above us flying foxes headed out to feed and fairy lights twinkled to life amidst the trees. We met a pig.  The pig offered us fruit.   Then I went back to Port Adelaide and revisited the street art and the light house,although the promises Fringe made about 3D animation street art apps were sadly underwhelming.  The street art was nice, though. The light house was doing light house stuff in the vein of light houses when they don't have to...

We were lying in bed reading in the morning and the house went Bang! "What was that?" We said, and blamed the cat, trucks, or a freight train. Then Roger's phone dinged and told him we'd just felt an earthquake. Apparently they happen regularly (as in once every 5ish years) in the Adelaide Hills and we were quite excited to have experienced the best (ie one that doesn't cause any damage) kind of earthquake to have. Leaving aside considerations of the shaking earth, the Adelaide Fringe Festival is on with multiple events happening until the 20th, and so far we've gone to 3D swings (boring, don't waste your money) and a concert at the Norwood Town Hall (worth it) where we discovered that we are getting old because we thought that 2pm was absolutely the best time time of day to go to a concert. Fusion Pops Orchestra, in case you're wondering.  In the grand entry foyer of the Norton Town Hall.  Note the beautiful pressed tin ceiling, and the patterned skyl...

This past week the east coast of Australia was visited by an unprecedented weather event which caused widespread flooding in Queensland and continues to do so as it moves casually down the NSW coast. Thankfully all our family and friends managed to stay mostly high and dry, with the odd sogginess around the edges, the threat of an involuntary stay in a hotel for a few days, and the beginning of what promises to be a lengthy discussion with an overwhelmed insurance company over a leaking roof. We watched the news, which led with stories of tragedy and heroism played out in small dinghies amidst raging torrents of flood water. This was immediately followed by a local news item about a storm which dropped a torrential 25mm over Adelaide, leading to flooding that in parts reached ankle depth. I shouldn't make fun of South Australia. It really is very dry and as a consequence South Australia doesn't bother with drainage to the same extent as the east coast, with the result that 25mm...