Australia by Red Nomad OZ
Cooper's Creek, Outback Queensland

Aussie Icons #2 – Cooper’s Creek

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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Swimmers Beach, Yorke Peninsula, South Australia

7 Days … on the Southern Yorke Peninsula, South Australia

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 Scenic Public Toilets #11 – Stansbury, Yorke Peninsula, SA

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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OZ Top Spot #6 – Starlight’s Lookout, Longreach, Queensland

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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Only in OZ #11 – The Big Winch, Coober Pedy, South Australia

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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Storm clouds gather over the West MacDonnell Ranges via Alice Springs, Northern Territory

Aussie ABC – A is for Alice Springs!

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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Off the Tourist Trail #4 Pentland, Queensland

We needed warmth NOW. We’d left the cold south a few weeks ago, but hadn’t yet hit the tropics. You KNOW you’re not warm enough when even the thermal pools feel cold … The solution? Head further north – and QUICKLY! Our map (no, I DON’T mean ‘GPS’) showed a road heading north from Blackall, up through historic Barcaldine to Torrens[…]

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Fort Bourke Stockade - the Replica!

Only in OZ #10 – Fort Bourke Stockade, Bourke, NSW

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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OZ Top Spot #5 – Kanyaka Ruins, Flinders Ranges, SA

What happens in a world where resources are divided equally, with equal opportunity for developing and managing them through good times and bad, and with an equal chance of success or failure? No, I’m not paraphrasing ‘Imagine’, writing the manifesto for a great big new mining tax or plotting a new version of ‘Monopoly’! But visit the Kanyaka Station ruins[…]

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Australia’s Scenic Public Toilets #10 Evans Head, New South Wales

Strategically located at the Razorback Lookout Picnic Area in Evans Head in Northern New South Wales, the views from these amenities would HAVE to be among Australia’s most spectacular! From the outside, that is… Inside the facilities is a VERY different story!  Or at least it was during our November 2009 visit when they appeared to have been used as shelter during[…]

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