While Not Working

 Our new house sits on the northern bank of the Torrens, backing onto both the river and the O-Bahn.  We can pop out through the back gate right onto the bikeway or take a short walk to the nearest enterchange to zoom into town on the O-Bahn.  Roger, long convinced that the world north of the river is a wild wasteland of reprobates whose whole purpose in life is to rack up speeding fines, struggles with the genteel mansions and wide, tree-lined streets on which we live. Not having spent much time in the northern wastelands, we set out to do a spot of exploring.  First off, I took a gravity-assisted bike ride down a minor road in the Adelaide Hills. There were hair-pin bends, long sweeping downhills, and views across the gorge to the Colonial Track (on my list of places to ride or walk). Away in the distance Port Adelaide lay under an anaemic sunset. The following day we set out to explore the remains of the Yatala prison quarry in what is now the Dry Creek Linear Par...

 We spent 5 nights in the boat house cabin in Clayton Bay Caravan Park.  Roger watched black swans and pelicans float on the waters of the lake as he worked, while I enjoyed a view over the caravan park where grey nomads wandered back and forth from the ablutions block and a round little boy rode a strider bike between the caravans.  He zoomed up beside me when I went for a walk after work.  "Hello!" he said,  "I remember you!"  Which was slightly confusing because I most definitely didn't remember him.  "What are you doing?"  "I'm taking a photo of the sunset." "Can you take a photo down here?"  He scooted down to the waterside and began arranging himself and his bike for a photograph.  I quickly scarpered while he wasn't looking.  I don't like to disappoint small round children, but I also don't like to take photos of small children without first discussing it with their parents and I didn't want him to fi...

On our last day in Mclarenvale a large solar storm was forecast to result in an Auroroa Australis of proportions that could be seen from the Australian mainland and, possibly, as far north as Adelaide.  Armed with an absolute lack of knowledge about astrophotography I downloaded an Aurora app and headed off to Maslins Beach lookout to have a shot (ha ha) at getting a shot of the Aurora.  Roger, not wanting to stand around in the dark and cold, stayed home with the dog. All ready for Auroral action.  My app informed me that the best auroras happened from 09:30 in the morning and were not visible due to daylight. Waiting for the daylight to take itself off to the other side of the world.  A pretty crescent moon came out to play, but no-one was interested in it so it headed off to the other side of the world as well.  A small group of random photographers stood on Maslins Beach lookout with me, watching the sun set.  A lady came along on an electric bike and t...

Almost three years ago we gave away a whole heap of stuff, packed all the remaining stuff that we couldn't possibly live without into a storage shed in western Queensland, and proceeded to live for three years with what we could carry in the car.  Our stuff mouldered through freezing winters, mouse plagues, and roasting summers in its tin shed in Roma and we rarely thought about it. Eventually my clothes started wearing out, which wasnt surprising given I was wearing the same 3 t-shirts on rotation for three years and couldn't bring myself to buy more clothes when I knew I had boxes of perfectly good duds in storage.  Not that t-shirts in a box 3000km away were much good to me when the worn-out T-shirts reached the fine line between shabby chic and no longer decent. Roger was in the same boat, with rather more of himself than was necessary poking out through holes that weren't in the original pattern for his clothes.  We decided we needed a storage shed in South Australia...

The dog and I had a few days at home on our own while Roger gallivanted around Sydney in the rain, attending a graduation and catching up with family. In McLarenvale bright sunshine filled a cloudless sky, the light breeze was neither too hot nor too cold, and the autumn leaves glittered red and gold in the vineyards.    I jumped on my bicycle and took off for another uphill-downhill ride on roads I'd not traveled before. Having had a lot of type 2 fun last time, I looked at today's route carefully and adjusted my expectations to match, therefore it wasn't a surprise when Taylor Hill road tilted upways and I had to walk.    I took a lot of rests to look for koalas. I didn't see any koalas, despite frequently stopping to examine the grand old eucalypts that grew in the road reserve. I only had to walk for a km or so and then I was able to ride, albeit with lots of koala-spotting breaks, to the top of the hill and the intersection with Range Road.    Up on ...

There was a citrus tree in our back yard, dripping with lemons. There was a small fluffy dog in our house, bursting with energy. The small fluffy dog had two stuffed toys which his owners were quite clear were for indoor play only. We played vigorous games of indoor fetch with the small fluffy dog, pretending to throw the toy while he raced up and down the hallway searching for it.  Lacking traction on the bamboo floor, he struggled with rapid take-off, sudden changes of direction, and heavy braking.  We exploited this weakness for our own amusement. Deprived of his toys while outdoors the small fluffy dog circled our chairs like a shark at feeding time, desperately bringing his indoor toys outdoors in the hope of playtime.  One day, tired of confiscating his indoor toys, I picked up a lemon from the collection on the table, and threw it to him.  "Play with that," I said. And he did. He played his own game of fetch, tapping the lemon with his nose, rolling it with hi...