Differences Between Tanunda and Alice Springs

We left Alice Springs because it is isolated and so expensive to get to the East, South or West Coasts where our denser populations live in leafy suburbs. Airfares are expensive and driving requires two or three days and a tanker full of diesel.

Recently, we drove from Tanunda to Alice Springs with an overnight stay at Coober Pedy and return and it cost us about $700. Flying would have been $700 each.

At Tanunda, we can drive to Adelaide and access many other places without having to do a two-day drive to get there. However, we've noticed some differences between life in the Barossa Valley and Alice Springs that we probably didn't expect.

Alice Springs is better catered for with shops and facilities than the Barossa Valley. None of the three towns that comprise Barossa Valley, Tanunda, Nuriootpa and Angaston has a cinema. Government services for such things as Centrelink, motor vehicle registration etc are at Gawler or Elizabeth.

Bunnings, my favourite hardware shop is at Gawler. Mitre 10 at Nuriootpa is six kilometres away and tends to be more expensive than Bunnings and not as well stocked.

Neither Woolworths nor Coles is available locally. We have several Foodland stores and Aldi, the latter of which is excellent.

However, Gawler is only about 27 kilometres away down an excellent road and the A20 Highway.

It's not too much of a drama to go there once a week and it's a pleasant drive through vineyards and lovely green fields.

There are very few indigenous Australians in the Barossa although Tanunda has an Aboriginal artifacts shop in the main street. The constant barrage of advertisements and politics related to Aboriginal affairs doesn't exist in the Barossa, which is a pleasant change after decades living in the Territory.

Religion maintains a strong hold on the local population, most of whom come from German or Scottish ancestry and many of whom have lived here for generations. Names of people and streets etc are largely Germanic and only a few of us have names that aren't Germanic.

People are friendly and seem content. As would be expected, wine production is high and consumption pretty high too. Of a weekend, the population explodes with tourists travelling from one wine tasting to another.

While the Barossa (along with the other four South Australian wine regions) contributes greatly to the Gross Domestic Product and other economic aggregates, I expect it also has a considerable impact on the livers of many inhabitants.

We loved life at Alice Springs and we believe we'll also love our lives here as our last destination after many moves during our married life together.

Robin

My Polo Shirt Logo

Anyone who knows me will know that I'm a pedant - a person who is excessively concerned with minor details and rules - when it comes to documentation and other communicative media.

It comes from my policing and business teaching backgrounds. In policing, the letter of law is important. Teaching document production in typing, word processing and accounting classes requires attention to a high degree of accuracy too, so there's the apparent source.

How does that relate to the heading, "My Polo Shirt Logo?" Read on.

When Christina and I were in England last year, we visited a huge outlet shopping centre near Chester. Every brand imaginable had an outlet there as well as brands we hadn't heard of before. Even Tag-Heuer, one of my favourite watch brands was there. There were literally dozens of them spread over quite a few hectares.

It was a Saturday and thousands of people filled the shops, corridors and open spaces, many carrying branded bags indicating multiple purchases.

Several of the outlets were obviously selling their current fashions, not outdated products. We visited a Polo store where I looked at several lovely polo shirts. They were displaying prices of 75 and 80 British Pounds (around $130-150 AUD) which I thought was outrageous. Locals were snapping them up! 

Without exception, all the polo shirts had been made in China. Thousands of shirts bearing Chinese brands and small logos. I'd seen equally nice shirts at K Mart and Target at home.

There was no way I was going to pay $130 for a K Mart shirt with someone's brand logo displayed. You can buy the same quality shirts at K Mart for $10 AUD. Thirteen shirts for one seemed like a good trade-off.

As we drove back to our hotel at Swindon, it occurred to me that I could buy $10 K Mart shirts and steal logos from the big name brands and have them embroidered on my shirts. After all, Christina has a sewing machine that embroiders. But using someone else's logo is dishonest, so I decided I'd use my own logo. Here it is.


I've got a number of unbranded K Mart polo shirts on which I'm going to get Christina to embroider my Henry logo.

Nobody will know who the hell Henry is, but who cares? It will keep them guessing. Maybe I could start producing my own brand line of shirts at half the price of Polo, Adidas, Nike, and the rest of them. Who knows where this could lead.

Robin

It's Now Henrys of Tanunda

Robin and Christina at Al Ain, UAE

When I started this blog I had moved to Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates for a three-year work contract, so I called it "Henrys of Al Ain". It was intended to help communicate with our friends without having to send multiple emails.

It wasn't a good name choice because I didn't think ahead, that we wouldn't always live at Al Ain. In hindsight, I should have called the site the "Henrys".

It's now 13 years since Christina and I moved to Al Ain. Since then, we've returned to Alice Springs (10 years) and now we are at our final house at Tanunda in South Australia. It's time to change the blog's heading yet again, this time to "Henrys of Tanunda".

I've also changed the URL from https://henrys-of-alain.blogspot.com to https://henry-tanunda.blogspot.com.

I hope you continue to visit occasionally and keep in touch.

Robin