go-see-do guide for adventurous travellers
South Australian traveller ‘Rest’ stops are a perfect amalgam of political correctness, public safety and parsimony. Endless signs lining outback highways encourage drivers to stop, take a break and revive – and to facilitate the traveller take-up rate, rest stops like this one are provided! Just the inducement needed to pull over and break ones journey, don’t you think??? There’s a[…]
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As an antidote to the Atherton Tableland mist and drizzle, Irvinebank was working just fine. A few kilometres beyond Herberton, we’d crossed the range to clear skies, warmth, and a spectacular setting – another universe far, far away from yet another day of dampness. Just what Dr Pilchard ordered! Sadly, no bakery but the monster plate of chips accompanying the[…]
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The perils littering the Australian coastal fringe are legendary – braving the threat of crocodiles, sharks, marine stingers, stonefish, blue-ringed octopi, sea snakes or stingrays in our waterways isn’t for the fainthearted! Even the rainforest or coastal scrub can be risky – stinging trees, death adders, king browns and other more deadly snakes, spiders, various stinging ants, mosquitoes, scorpions or[…]
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Studded with campfires in the late evening dusk, the creek banks were alive with the sounds of trucks thundering across the bridge, beer cans popping and that combination of braggadocio, loud laughter and hi-jinks peculiar to any random group of three Aussie males on a boy’s own adventure. Yes, Cooper’s Creek earned its Aussie-rite-of-passage status in the June 2009 week[…]
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Puffing and panting, we haul ourselves up the rocky path, our feet sliding on the dusty gravel. Another few metres and we reach the base of the rocky outcrop at the summit. We peer through the gap. We’ve climbed Starlight’s lookout – a mound rising high above the surrounding plain – and the view stretches for miles and miles and[…]
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Big Winch, Coober Pedy, South Australia Like a giant sword of Damocles, Coober Pedy’s Big Winch looms over the head of a hapless tourist. Well … actually, it’s Pilchard, sacrificing himself for the photgraphic greater good – so you can see just how big the ‘Big Winch’ actually is! Luckily for him, the perspective is an optical illusion – and[…]
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All roads lead to Alice Springs – as close as a fart in an outhouse to the centre of OZ! It’s not the country’s official geographic centre – but go on! Have a look at the map of Australia – how do you find the centre of THAT?! But exact centre or not, no town defines OZ quite like Alice[…]
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Surprisingly little is known about Fort Bourke Stockade, the only defensive fort in Australia, but this has been no barrier to building a lifelike facsimile near Bourke, in outback New South Wales. Although its a) true dimensions; b) exact location; and c) the building materials used in its construction are not recorded, this tiny stockade is apparently a ‘real life’ replica! Built in[…]
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Woomera? Or Stepford?!?!? Was our July 2008 visit during a particularly slow time, or are the wide, open streets normally this neat, quiet and uninhabited? I guess we’ll find out next time we visit – and there WILL BE a next time, because this unusual outback South Australian town just off the Stuart Highway en route to Roxby Downs and[…]
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We only made three mistakes when we visited Porcupine Gorge National Park in Northern Queensland’s Outback. The wild, natural beauty of this spectacular gorge is a short drive (by outback standards) north of nearby Hughenden – with various points of interest along the way outlined in a self-drive tour guide available from the ‘Flinders Discovery Centre’. The town of Hughenden[…]
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