The Big Trip North

An Aboriginal sign on a salt lake

When you drive around Australia, you get an idea of how very large our country is. It's huge!

The interior is largely underdeveloped, lacks water and the nutrition to grow food crops. It's used extensively for cattle industries. 

In the north of South Australia is the Woomera Rocket Range prohibited area where nuclear bombs were tested in the 50s and rockets are still tested. Some of the range is still radioactive, thus, nobody is allowed to travel into the range.

The terrain changes from open expanses with gibber rock, few trees and no capacity to turn it into anything of value to similar country with red sand and short acacia trees that survive for years without water among the salt bush. Over the South Australian border in the Northern Territory, the landscape produces some small hills with rugged landscapes that have been there for millions of years since Australia was underwater.

Many fossils, including trilobite fossils, remind us of how long ago it was since we were underwater.

It's harsh country and over the couple of hundred years since European occupation, dozens of explorers have died there of heat exhaustion, dehydration or starvation. In some places it's hard to find anything living but a number of lizards seem to appear at frequent intervals. Flies seem to survive anywhere.

The trip from Adelaide to Alice Springs in Central Australia is 1500 km and although it can be done in one 15 hour day, we usually stay overnight at Coober Pedy going north and Woomera going south. That way we avoid driving at night when it's more dangerous because of the kangaroos, emus and cattle that wander about the roads.

Here's a video my wife Christina took while we were driving through the Woomera Rocket Range, it shows what the country is like.

If you ever come this way, bring plenty of water and invest in either a satellite phone or a personal locator beacon (PLB), because if something goes amuck, there is no mobile phone connection in many of the areas and PLB will attract a rescue helicopter much faster than word of mouth from a driver travelling to the nearest township.

It's a lovely trip if you haven't done it a hundred times.

Robin

2019 - A Big Year for Tory

Tory is presented with his certificate

So much can happen in a few hours. 

For Tory it was two significant events in anyone's life; the culmination of 12 years of schooling AND transition from child to adult.

On Thursday, 23 November 2019 Tory attended his high school formal looking impeccable in his suit with tie and received his Graduation Certificate.

Surrounded by his peer group and their parents and guests, teachers and others, he received his Graduation Certificate.

In a convenient stroke of luck, 23 November 2019 was the day before Tory turned 18, so at the stroke of midnight he gained the key to adulthood and all that goes with it. For a new 18 year old, the most important key is that they can now enter licensed premises without supervising adults and partake of the nectars of the gods.

It's that difficult period of one's life when some of your friends can join you at a bar and others can't. However, the good side is that when each friend turns 18, it's another reason to celebrate as the crowd at the pub expands.

Tory and Mum Meredith

Meredith attended the formal with Tory and his partner for the night, Lucy. They had arrived in a vintage vehicle that you can see in the photo below of Tory and Lucy.

From all reports, it was a pleasant night for all of them and after the formal, Meredith went home and Tory and mates went to the Alice Springs Casino shortly before midnight where they waited outside chatting until the clock struck 12 and then walked in, knowing they were all of legal age.

I understand Tory had his first beer in a licensed venue and then the group went to a friend's house to party with some of their not-yet-eligible mates. How very thoughtful.

At the time of writing, I haven't spoken to Tory, but my guess is that, like many of us, he probably overindulged and slept for most of the next day, his birthday.

Tory, Lucy and the Vintage Car

Now, with his formal schooling years behind him, the next thing is to find a job. We've all been there - our first job. Remember it?

Tory hopes to get an apprenticeship, preferably in electrical work and now that school has ended, at least until and if he begins an apprenticeship, it's knocking on doors seeing if he can find an employer.

If he gets an apprenticeship it will be back to school, but this time on-the-job training and trade school by block release. 

My experience in TAFE Queensland where we ran pre-vocational programs, suggests that students undertaking trades often do much better academically than they did at school. This appears to be because the topics being learned have a direct bearing on their "real world". As teachers, we were always pleased to see young people who had performed poorly at school come good and enjoying thier work.

As proud grandparents, of course we wish Tory every success in the future and as long as we can will help it happen. 

Robin

PS: Here's a shot of our young man on his first day of school. It's amazing what a difference 12 years makes.

Jan, 2007. Living Waters School, Alice Springs NT

RSL Tanunda Christmas Lunch and AGM

The Hut set up for Christmas Lunch

Both Christina and I were heavily involved in organising and running the Returned Services League (RSL) Christmas Lunch and Annual General meeting for 2019.

Christina is treasurer and I was acting in the secretary's position while she was on holidays overseas. 

Fortunately, we have a group of volunteers who all contributed to setting up tables, cutlery, glass wear, decorations etc and cleaning up afterwards so that we could hold our brief Annual General Meeting.

Meals were provided by local caterers 

Christina, as Treasurer, sat at the entrance to The Hut and collected meal fees and membership renewals. As usual, she does a top job of everything she handles and everything went off like a Swiss watch.

Each table had a bottle of red and white wine and judging by the number of bottles I took to the recycling bin afterwards, nobody held back.

Our bar has prices that are unmatched with local restaurants and bars so a quantity of beer, spirits and soft drinks was consumed too.

You can have a few drinks at the RSL Tanunda Hut without having to get a second mortgage on your house (assuming you have a mortgage).

Living in the middle of one of Australia's major wine producing regions has been an eye-opener in seeing how many people drink wine and how much of it is consumed. 

It's not unusual to see a gossip of attractive young ladies sitting at one of the alfresco wine bars having a midday tipple of Barossa wine. I guess having spent so many years living with the prohibition in the Northern Territory, I'm not accustomed to seeing people drinking at midday.

Apparently, until fairly recently, workers in vineyards were permitted to drink as much of the wonderful nectar they could. Then Occupational Health and Safety improved and the generous practice disappeared in the dustbin of history. Can you imagine how many inebriated workers must have driven home? Can you imagine how many damaged livers there must have been?

Shortly, our RSL Club stands down for the Christmas-New Year period and we;ll be back in action in mid-January.

Robin

Why are there no photos?

Unfortunately, the satellite internet on the Sapphire Princess doesn't have sufficient grunt to handle large density images. Since I don't have access to my usual range of image editing software, I'm unable to thin them out, so I will place appropriate images with posts when I have better internet access.

Robin

Piraeus, Greece

We'd never visited Greece, so we were looking forward to docking at Piraeus, the port of Athlens which we did around 0700 hrs.

With so much to see and so little time (I call these visits sheep dip tours) we signed up for a hop-on-hop-off bus and did a visual of some parts of the city with a long stop at the Acropolis.

As there were three ships visiting, there were far too many tourists. We were bumping  into each other on stairways and trying to take a photo without someone walking in front of you was a challenge. I'm a bit of an impatient old bugger who hates queues and doesn't do crowds well, so it wasn't my best day.

The architecture and engineering is amazing given the era. Huge heavy plinths have been raised and installed above stanchions with great precision. And what magic enabled the craftsmen to create hard marble stanchions that are perfectly cylindrical with series of evenly spaced symmetrical gougings throughout their length?

I'm sure there is much more to the human story than historians know or have revealed to us.

It always bothered me in Egypt that of all the hieroglyphs, there is not one schematic diagram with measurements and mathematical calculations although both would have been critical. I wonder whether the artefacts were built by a much earlier race of extraterrestrials or advanced human beings and later peoples added the hieroglyphs. We'll probably never know.

What we do know is that they must have been stunning before time and the elements degraded them.

Robin
Off to Valletta, Malta

The Amazing Suez Canal

Transiting the Suez Canal

I recall hearing about the Suez Canal when at primary school, although like many topics it was a passing reference soon tucked away into the depths of memory.

Now, 60 years later, I have a signed certificate attesting to the fact that I have transited the Suez. And what an interesting experience it was.

The ship upon which I am a captive for 37 days, the Sapphire Princess, dropped anchor in a 'waiting bay' at the south-eastern entry to the canal at about 5 pm. Twenty or thirty other vessels were at both the northern and southern extremity leaving a clear pathway through the middle for those ships exiting the canal.

Within an hour or so we saw several vessels leave the canal, a couple of ships carrying enormous numbers of containers packed about six or seven high, and a fully enclosed vessel indicating it was an autocarrier - probably full of nice new BMWs and other European cars heading to someone's market.

The Captain of the Sapphire Princess told us we were queued until about 4 am the next day when we would head into the canal.

By very early morning, the televised ship cam in our stateroom indicated dozens of people had gotten up at an indecent time to watch the canal entry. They were crowding the front decks of the ship.

It was a tad early for us, but after an half hour or so, we succumbed as we couldn't sleep anyway. There are 2,500 people on board and I swear they were all on deck.

The Suez Canal is of course, an ingenious invention intended to cut thousands of kilometres off travel. It surprised me to hear from the Captain that it costs $625,000 USD for the Sapphire Princess to pass through the Suez. However, compare that with the cost of salaries, fuel and time taken to come around the Horn of Africa and it's probably a lot cheaper. Egypt is making a fortune from the canal that was designed and created by British engineers working from an idea initially suggested by Napolean Bonaparte.

Egypt earns about 3 billion USD per annum from the canal.

The tidal influence in the canal isn't great, so fitting in with tides doesn't seem to be a problem. The width and depth are sufficient for the largest vessels and the walls of the canal are lined with rock works intended to prevent erosion. On each side for most of the 197 miles, there are piles of sand - like sand dunes that run parallel with the canal and indicate that it is regularly dredged to ensure its depth.

Also along both sides of the canal are regularly spaced Egyptian Army pill boxes, each containing an armed soldier. Many of the soldiers simply stand on top of the sand hills and each side has soldiers perhaps at one kilometre intervals, protecting Egypt from an invasion from who knows whom, because both sides of the canal is Egyptian territory. Maybe they think someone will attack from a ship in the canal, which is why the whole canal has a fence perhaps 100 metres from the canal edge behind the mounds of dredged sand.

When we reached the city of Suez which we were told has 750,000 people there were dozens of apartment style buildings running for many kilometres parallel with the canal. I saw a huge power station, probably with diesel electric generators pumping out very high voltage electricity judging from the huge insulators and power lines.

Along some parts of the canal there are installations in the water that appear to be for unloading oil as they consist of large pipes and swing arms that look like they are used for connecting to a ships outlet ports. Storage tanks appear on shore.

Towards the northern end of the Suez, there is a large lake through which the Suez has been installed, reducing the amount of work cutting out the terrain.

We exited the canal early afternoon and set course to Athens.

This is another experience I can add to my Bucket List.

Robin

Dimensions: The canal is 193 km long, 24 m deep and 205 m wide.

Aqaba, Jordan

Aqaba is a pleasant enough city in Jordan several hundred kilometres from Amman, the capital. Jordan is a very small country known officially as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and just happens to have within it's bounds a remarkable place called Petra, an area inhabited thousands of years ago by Nabateans who cut buildings into the local sandstone creating some stunning, symmetrical designs, the one called the "Treasury" being most often shown on travel brochures.

There is much more of course than the travel brochures show. Also, Wadi (Arabic for river) Rum is within a stone's thrown of Aqaba and Amman and a popular tourist spot because of its natural beauty.

As we had visited both Wadi Rum and Aqaba some years ago, we didn't see much sense in paying to visit them again, so we did a a one hour taxi tour of Aqaba driven by a very nice man called Ibrahim.

Ibrahim took us to some ancient ruins that we wouldn't have seen if we had eg, taken the open top bus tour of the town, which was twice as expensive. We also visited a Thursday market where locals buy their fruit and vegetables each week. It was nothing flash, just a lot of people in an area selling foodstuffs from the back of trailers, utility vehicles, boxes and so on. The produce all looked fresh and enticing, especially the huge apples and smallish bananas, a couple of which we tasted.

Our first stop a was Mc Donald's outlet (yes, even at Aqaba) where we bought a cup of coffee so we could use their internet which was much better than that provided on the ship. We paid some bills, updated some apps and wrote emails to the family and a few others. Thank goodness for Maccas!

After our tour with Ibrahim, we walked about the township for an hour or so and decided to return to the ship. Christina had bought a couple of pairs of cheap tights and a black shailer to put over her shoulders.

One of the most interesting things about our visit was Ibrahim showing us an area of many hectares that had been purchased by the UAE royal family in which it intended to build a modern accommodation suburb complete with hotels and shops.

It's a huge area and will probably use tens of billions of the UAE's oil money. From what Ibrahim said, I'm not sure that all the locals are impressed with the idea, but in reality there is nought they can do to combat money.

Robin

Salalah, Oman

Unfortunately, the Sapphire Princess only berthed at Salalah for five hours so we didn't bother getting off.  By the time we would have disembarked, we wouldn't have seen much of the area and it would have been time to head back to the ship.

We visited Oman frequently while living at Al Ain and have been to Muscat, the capital, but not to Salalah, which is said to have some lovely countryside. Maybe another day we'll get to spend more time there to explore the sights.

Robin
Heading for Aqqaba, Jordan

Dubai - Still Interesting

Dubai is a 'world hub' as Sheik Mohamed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the zillionaire Ruler of Dubai, puts it.

Realising that oil isn't forever, the Sheik set out to make Dubai a hub for everything so that when the oil runs out in the Abu Dhabi Emirate, from which Dubai inherits much of its wealth, it won't revert to the Bedouin past.

You see, Dubai doesn't have oil. It has a large airport, world class medical centres, world class conference facilities, numerous five star hotels, and is a relatively cheap tourist Mecca. Add to that the tallest building on earth, a huge mall that includes a fully functional ski slope and you'll see that Dubai is exciting and different.

When we lived at nearby Al Ain from 2005 to 2008, Dubai was a mess of cranes and construction machinery - and dust from the nearby sand dunes. Now, the highway overpasses, many of the buildings and a modern sky rail are all up and running. The dust is still ever present.

The concrete stanchions and walls of the highways are nicely decorated with a variety of inexpensive designs. None of the bland 'just concrete' we see in Australian cities.

There is a new port building near which our cruise liner, the Sapphire Princess moored.

We took a tour to the Burj Khalifa building which had not then been completed when we returned to Australia. From the top we got a very nice 360 degrees view of Dubai.

In the Emirates Mall, we saw the expat workers from the Philippines and elsewhere, the expensive Gucci, Victoria's Secret and other outlets and smelled the scent of oud as we passed by the traditional perfume shops.

We saw the Emirati women clothed in black from head to toe, the men in their dish-dashas. The brown skinned children with bright brown eyes and black hair doing what kids everywhere do.

The trip brought back many happy memories of those numerous times we visited Dubai when 'home' was just 130 km down the road. The comfort of our unimaginably big mansion; the man who looked after our garden and washed our cars for a pittance. The heat emanating from the concrete. The easy life of an expat.

I expect that in time most of the people in the world will visit Dubai as it's centrally located and now a waypoint for many aviation and shipping companies. If you haven't been there yet, add it to your must see travel plan.

Robin

Cochin, India

Our first view of Cochin from the ship revealed a region with old buildings in a state of decay typical of very old countries. Remnants of the British and Portugese appear everywhere as does a vast quantity of untamed rubbish, mainly plastics.

Seems like there is no recycling or rubbish pickup in Cochin.

We visited a lovely church and some fishing nets that work on a cunning fulcrum system; lower the nets into the water, lift them up and voila! Full of fish. The only problem seemed to be that these days the fish had moved somewhere else as though they knew this was a danger zone.

It was very humid during our visit, but we did a tour on an airconditioned coach which meant intermittent relief followed by soaking humidity. It's not all that bad being soaking hot when you know eventually you'll find a cool shower and airconditioned ship at the end of the day. The poor people who live there just have to cope - as they do. It's remarkable what we humans can adapt to.

We bypassed all the shop sellers selling essentially the same stuff everyone else seems to be selling - clothing, nick-knacks, wooden boxes, magnets and so on. You can only have so much of that stuff in one lifetime.

Back on the ship and we were heading to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, a bit like returning home.

Many people on the ship complained about their visit. Everyone, whether you got off the ship had to have a visa worth $80 USD. Even the ship's crew had to pay. My guess is that Cochin will get scrubbed from the visited ports as will other places in India. That's unfortunate because many small traders will lose a lot of business.

I checked on the Australian Govt visa site and found that transit visitors from India don't have to pay anything to pass through Australia. I'm going to take up the issue when I gets home.

Robin

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Wherever I go, in or out of Australia, I always ask myself, "would I live here?" There are many beautiful places on this wonderful planet that Carl Sagan referred to as, 'the little blue dot' as he viewed it from cameras on one of the numerous exploratory space vehicles, possibly Voyager.

Colombo doesn't appeal to me as a place I'd like to live. There was rubbish everywhere as though there are no rubbish collection services, the buildings are in disrepair - possibly because they are very old, and it's a tad crowded for a simple outback boy.

However, in its favour, the people we met were friendly and pleasant. Perhaps if one actually spent some time there, it would become more appealing and one would focus on the positives instead of comparing it with other countries.

Obviously, the millions who live there are happy to call it home and have dozens of cruise ships with thousands of tourists visit, trample all over their temples and contribute probably millions to the economy.

Although it was nice to see how the others live and explore the ancient ruins and British era buildings, one visit is probably enough.

Robin
Off to Cochin, India.

PS: It was saddening and disappointing to hear about the violence caused by Islamists over the holiest of Christian holidays. How one can justify a belief in a loving, omniscient God with violence against your fellow humans is anyone's guess. The Koran instructs Moslems to subdue or kill what amounts to two thirds of the world's population - non-Moslems; now of course they are also killing off their fellow Moslems whom they believe are not orthodox enough.

If I was god, I'd be heartbroken to think anyone would carry out these acts in my name.

Beautiful Singapore - Jewel of Asia

I first visited Singapore in 1955 with my parents enroute to my father's new job with a tin mining company working out of Kuala Lumpur.

The only recollection I have from those days is the Raffles Hotel with ceiling fans that got my attention as I had never seen ceiling fans  before, and monkeys that hung about in the nearby trees.

I recall a story about the monkeys getting into someone's room and pulling their clothes out into the trees. If it's true, I can imagine how delighted the owners must have been.

Go forward six decades and Singapore is the model of a perfect city. With a mere four million local inhabitants, expat workers from all over the globe, and we tourists, it's no doubt changed significantly.

It's one of the neatest, cleanest cities I have seen only degraded by Little India that smelled and looked just like Big India. By comparison, Chinatown is much better kept.

We stayed at Robinson Quay and managed to do a Lot of walking with several inexpensive train rides and a tour. Near to us was the nightclubbing area filled with dozens of expensive restaurants, offers of high priced, but said to be discounted, buckets of beer. A 330ml bottle of local Tiger beer cost me $10 AUD. Later I bought a couple of tins of beer - 500ml for just over $5AUD each - Anchor, another local 500ml. A huge difference.

Wine is expensive in restaurants but cheaper bottles are available in specialist wine outlets and 7 Eleven stores. I bought two bottles to take on, the ship, a Jacobs Creek and a bottle from Chile.

So, the long and short of this is that it's expensive there for many things, but there are options to buy cheaper if one looks around.

It was more humid than we prefer and that goes with the territory so no use complaining about it. One just has to grin and bear it with frequent fluid intake, showers and change of clothes. Isn't that what the locals do?

If I was still young enough to work, spending a couple of years teaching something within my disciplines would be a high consideration because Singapore is so close and central to the rest of Asia. And such a nice place.

Needless to say, I took numerous photos of Singapore's iconic Marina Bay Sands Hotel, the three towers with a ship-like structure supported on top. It was also part of our tour.

Unfortunately, I've been unable to place them in the blog, but am working on a way to do so. See my related post.

Robin

Bangkok: No Power Shortage Here

A typical Asian capital, Bangkok is a critical tourist hub for Thailand that must rake in billions annually.

There are over 10 million citizens in Bangkok and an unknown number of tourists and unaccounted for locals.

We stayed at Ratchaprarop within the fashion area just out of Bangkok central. The supply of belts, bags, shoes, wallets, t-shirts and almost every other item of clothing is overwhelming. If you can't buy off the hook, there are tailor shops that will tailor you a suit in one day. As my days of wearing suits are over, I didn't investigate how good a one day suit is.

What occurred to me most often was the large amount of energy that is being provided to probably billions of air conditioners, lights and equipment throughout this city and elsewhere. One small building I saw had 20 split level air conditioners hanging from one wall. Presumably they weren't all working simultaneously, but presumably they could.

Where does all this energy come from? Obviously not from wind turbines and solar. I haven't seen a solar panel anywhere. Nor a wind turbine.

While Western Countries follow energy policies destined to turn them into Third World countries based on a well documented global warming Deception (See Dr Tim Ball's several books), Third World countries are steaming ahead towards the First World.

Any saving of C02 we make will have absolutely no benefit to anyone except the UN, to whom PM hopeful Bill Shorten has promised yet another $500 million if elected, and manufacturers of inefficient wind turbines and solar panels - China.

A gas that is essential for all life on earth that represents 0.04% of all gasses in the atmosphere has been demonised and is now accused of endangering all of us who inhabit the planet. What will people say about us in 100 years' time as they visit the remnants of our broken down wind farms - when they stop laughing?

Australia the lucky country is now the stupid country!

Robin

Barossa Valley - Blessing of the Vines

Barons at the rotunda address the crowd

According to the Barons of Barossa,

"Every year on the third Sunday of February, the Barons come together in Tanunda and declare the vintage. The first picked grapes are blessed in the historic Tabor Church, paraded along the main street and crushed and the juice sampled at Keil Garden. The Winemaker and Vigneron of the Year are also announced."

Christina and I attended Keil Garden to watch the proceedings and taste the grape juice.

Example plaque

On this day, new Barons are appointed by their peers. Two were selected for 2019 and awarded a ribbon with medallion. These are people chosen because of their inordinate contribution to the wine industry. When a Baron dies, a plaque is placed on the footpath lining the Keil Garden.

Needless to say, you need to do much more than just imbibe on wine to make the grade.



Strangely, the National Anthem wasn't played by the band, but the presentations took place, the two recipients of the awards then used an old wine press to press two baskets of grapes into a barrel - see photo.

Some lovely wine maidens from the local Faith Lutheran College then decanted the grape juice and presented anyone wanting to taste it with a sample.

It was very sweet and I commented that it was good enough as it was without the alcohol.

Everyone present seemed to enjoy themselves and it was just another example of the numerous festivals and other events that happen here. It really is a lovely part of Australia.

Robin

We're Off Again - Our 2019 Cruises

We're off again!

This time it's a long stint away from Australia and will take us to a number of places to which we have never been and a couple of revisits.

Determined not to leave too much of an inheritance for the kids when we take that journey from which nobody returns, we're getting in our last few trips abroad while our bodies still work sufficiently well to lug baggage about, drive hire cars, climb stairs, drink pina coladas, and do all the other things tourists usually do - aging tourists that is.

The first cruise aboard Princess Cruises Sapphire Princess leaves from Singapore and after 37 days, docks at Southampton, UK. The map above shows it's trek.

Sapphire Princess

It will be of particular interest to visit Dubai, UAE and Salalah, Oman again to see how they have changed since we lived nearby at Al Ain. But, would you believe it, it's over a decade since we left Al Ain?

Time seems to go faster as you get older (and hair grows where you don't need it)  - it's not fair.

Before we head off from Singapore, we're going to Bangkok, Thailand for a week to have a look around. Christina has been there before, but not Robin. 

Initially, we were contemplating getting some dental work done at Bangkok, but having spoken to a couple of dentists in Australia, we're thinking we'll get the work done locally when we return. Robin has had several visits to a periodontist and has been asked to wait three months before getting anything done so the periodontist can see whether his intervention has worked and what future work needs doing. So, it's probably pointless getting work done overseas beforehand after already investing so much.

After arriving at Southampton, we have about a month before we take cruise number two from Southampton around the British Isles. The map below shows the trek.

We'll tour the southern parts of England we never got to during our previous two visits before joining the cruise. This time it's on Princess Cruises Crown Princess for 12 days.

On return to Southampton we fly to Bangkok and will probably spend a few more days there before flying to Siem Reap in Cambodia.

A friend from Alice Springs has just recently established the Mango Villa Guest House at Siem Reap so it would be an opportune time to stay with him and visit the Angkor Wat temple complex which we have been keen to see. Then it will be back to Bangkok and head home direct to Adelaide via Singapore Airlines.

It's a hard life retirement, but Robin is always mindful of this verse from his favourite poet, Omar Khayyam (The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam):

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,

Before we too into the Dust descend,

Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie,

Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer; sans End!