Trucking Tidbits

I was tickled by the personal nature and encouraging tone of this sign and others in the series down the hill towards Denver. It was just missing a “Well done. You’ve made it” at the bottom. Who says the Colorado Department of Transportation is an uncaring bureaucracy?

And on the subject of trucks…get a load of this. It looks like a postman’s motorbike with bulging panniers or a bee with pollen-laden sacks.

Sir Porridge’s Epic Journey…Day Three

It was a day of large birds.

To we humans (I do not make that assumption lightly, dear reader), this:

is nothing more than a small rectangular representation of South Australia, but to Sir Porridge, AK, it is a landscape teeming with danger. That nonchalant pile of feathers (beneath the tree at left) is, to his trained eye, a blaring signal.  Wedgetail eagles, that most glorious and terrible of predators, are about. A gloss of bronze, a snap of leathery claw, and it’s curtains to you (if you’re meaty enough). Arguably, Sir P is not, but who’s to say whether he might not be the ideal eyrie-upholstery?

Trepidation makes Sir P’s eyes keen, allowing him to zoom beyond human sight.

The faint stalks of wind turbines on a distant ridge gladdened the knight. They make sense in a country bearing more than the average brunt of global warming.

Visiting the (remnants of) relatives:

Further on, the inky black of grazing cattle punctuated round, pale-yellow hills.

The tiny mining town, Iron Knob, looks like it’s been dropped into the scrub from a great height. The scattered buildings, with churches just about outnumbering houses, appear held together with bits of wire and four by two.

With little call to apprehend jay-walking emus, the police station is given over to other pursuits.

As the pink and grey galah in Kimba casts its beady, greedy eye over the landscape, Sir Porridge huddles ironically between its cereal-grabbing claws although one must, in all honesty, acknowledge that those claws have a certain inertia which pretty much guarantees his safety.

It’s been long and slow, and our intrepid traveller has kindly created work for road repair teams across a number of shires, but he has purportedly (check the sign in the photo above) made it halfway across.

He’s there on the metal seat, struggling to see over the engine.

It should be noted that halfway is actually still to come on the knight’s route since he travelled more directly from Sydney to east of Adelaide.

Ceduna, home of 4000 people and the October oyster festival, welcomed Sir Porridge (as one would expect). By the time he left, there were rumours of plans for an oatmeal festival.

Although this spot beneath the jetty was a pleasing place from which to observe the sunset, he moved to higher ground for the night due to obvious conflicts with the tide.

Now, This I Like

It’s got everything – quirkiness, recycling, reference to a disappearing culture.

And it’s more fun than a camper van.

Ah, life on the open road…

An ATM, a Truckie and a Tale of Asymmetry

Would you trust this machine with your money? (I assume it is an ATM.)

Mixing It Up In Moscow

I’m flying over Russia.

Surreal words. They warp me to a time where this was impossible. (It is a strange feeling to be grappling with an outdated mindset obtained second-hand.)

Alpine Miniatures

I come from a country that carries rocks in machines like this.

City of the People

When I first visited Stuttgart, the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany, in 2006, I found it as open, vulnerable and focussed as a toddler. It was the quarter final of the Soccer World Cup. The streets of this then 600 000-strong city were almost devoid of cars. A hush had fallen but a roar, muted by distance and walls, rose from apartments, houses and pubs whenever Germany scored a goal. Afterwards, the streets ran thick with jubilation. People crammed into the Schlossplatz (Palace Square) in the centre of the city, united in a single emotion.