go-see-do guide for adventurous travellers
Compared with other states, South Australia works hard to preserve the sanctity of its reservoirs. Their waters are generally unsullied by boating, skiing, fishing or swimming activities – and poorly maintained facilities tend to discourage visitors from lingering. But the Barossa Valley Reservoir’s Dam Wall is an exception. A short drive past Williamstown, north of Adelaide, the outlook from the[…]
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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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Much of the appeal of Australia’s Scenic Public Toilets lies in their surroundings. Australia’s amazing coastal, rainforest, outback, regional, beach, bush and desert attractions often feature conveniences set amongst magnificent scenery – and sporting world class views. BUT … sadly, the actual amenities blocks usually don’t score highly in ANY kind of ‘WOW’ factor. No matter how spectacular the setting,[…]
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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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What do overseas visitors make of Australia’s more esoteric pictorial instructions? Space constraints mean non-English wording is often limited – or non-existent! So the sign designer is stuck with conveying important, but sometimes obscure facts and instructions with stick figures. Their success necessarily relies on reader ability to immediately interpret the pictures correctly and heed their warnings and messages without[…]
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South Australia’s Southern Yorke Peninsula (SYP) can get pretty tedious – day after ho-hum day of blue skies, mile after punishing mile of spectacular coastal scenery, more and yet more (almost) deserted beaches. Seal and dolphin watching, fishing, museums, shipwrecks, snorkelling, surfing, wildflowers, markets and country shows. A well preserved, documented – AND fascinating history. And it all comes with arguably[…]
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Australia’s beaches don’t all look like the pre-tropical-cyclone-Yasi* paradisical wet dream of white sand, palms and crystal clear water! While this may fill some reader’s hearts with dismay, there’s no way the southern beaches, especially those of South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula, could be mistaken for their northern counterparts! But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – Stansbury’s stretch of beach[…]
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Desperately seeking sewage ponds (as one does!), we whizzed down a dirt road behind Quorn, in South Australia’s mid-North, only just keeping ahead of the clouds of dust we were generating. And the squalor of the sewage pond? Does that quantify Quorn’s quintessence?? Of course not! Our quest will be no surprise to quantities of inquisitive birdwatchers who regularly add[…]
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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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Either that, or campers with WAAAAAY too much time on their hands! This rocky greeting was sighted just after the October 2010 school holidays - so perhaps it was a bored kids project!! In a mystery location somewhere between Bunyeroo and Brachina Gorges in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges National Park, the sign is a tragic reminder of the effects of the[…]
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