While Not Working

If I had to ride a bicycle to Seacliff to hand over some car keys, at least I had a nice day to do so. The breeze was gentle, the sky was clear, and the sunshine was bright if lacking a bit in the warmth department. I double and triple-checked that I had the car keys, and then rode a meandering path south through suburbia because I was a wee bit bored with riding along the beach front.  I followed the Stuart River, a rather depressing flashback to the days when progress entailed the domination of nature and the employment of copious quantities of concrete. Wild river.   Arriving at Seacliff well before Roger, I entertained myself by riding to the very end of the beach and I'm so glad I did, for what did I find but this... "Soft sand slurry present: enter at own risk."  AKA man-made quicksand: temptation for fools.   After 30+ years of marriage I know what thrills an engineer, so after we had conducted the all-important key transfer and had our almost-as-important cup...

One of our previous house owners offered a short sit, slumming it down in McLarenvale with a small fluffy dog and a plethora of vineyards and cafes available for taste testing.  Short straws were drawn and the upshot was that Roger took himself off for the hardship posting and I stayed home with the big fluffy dog. Roger, buoyed by the retreat of his back problems, took himself off to McLarenvale a day early and by bicycle,  along the way staying in a caravan park beside the sea.  He pedaled all day into an arctic head wind, consoling himself at the cafes scattered along the waterfront and perfecting the art of finding sheltered places for picnics. The struggle is real. In the sun, out of the wind. Perfect. He pitched his tent in the arctic wind and sought shelter, first in the caravan park laundry for the purposes of recharging, and then in a warm and cosy bar with comfortable chairs and patrons playing Uno.  For sure a hardship posting. It was a very civilised way ...

The coastal walk from Hallett Cove Conservation Park to Seacliff hugged the shoreline, meandering through a narrow band of heath between the back yards of seaside mansions and the cliffs above the sea, regularly interrupted by steep narrow gullies where torturous wooden staircases descended to the bottom and climbed breathlessly up the other side.  Not long after I first puffed my way along the Coastal Walk the staircases became so rickety that the council closed them to the public, putting up barrier fences reinforced with metres of bright orange tape and stern signs telling the public not to pass lest they lose their footing and tumble to their demise. The public ignored the signs and took precarious detours around the tape, determined to walk their dogs and peer in the unshuttered seaward windows of the mansions, as they had always done.  They stumbled dangerously close to the cliff edges to spot seals, have picnics, and watch for whales. The council put up bigger fences an...

If you've come to hear a story about a shipwreck on the high seas with crashing waves, howling wind, and tales of miraculous escapes to safety, you'll be sadly disappointed.  Instead, 'tis a pedestrian tale of the life of the screw steamer Excelsior, built in 1897 By Gourlay Brothers in Dundee, Scotland.  The Excelsior worked out of Sydney and Tahiti before moving to South Australia where it was owned by the Darling flour millers and then the SA Farmers Union Cooperative.  In 1933 it was sold to the SA Harbors Board and converted to a coal hulk for the purpose of carrying coal to the steam powered dredges working in Port Adelaide.  Progress marched onward, diesel-powered dredges took over from coal, and in 1945 the Excelsior was unsentimentally dispatched to Mutton Cove, on the northern end of the Lefevre Peninsula, and left there. I rode my bike out to the Excelsior on a day when winter tussled with spring and neither one could win. Mutton Cove lay at the end of a l...