Merry Christmas 2019

For all of you who celebrate Christmas, I wish you Merry Christmas and hope you have a wonderful festive season and of course an excellent New Year.

If you aren't Christian, it's still an excellent time to get together with friends, family and colleagues for meals, gift-giving, and general socialisation.

Stay safe and stay well.

With all the bad news circulating these days: fires, impeachment, kids being misled about the end of the world by 2050, Sir David Attenborough being caught lying about walruses, volcano deaths in New Zealand etc, I thought I'd post something a little happier.

It's an item from the Spectator. You can read it here:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/12/weve-just-had-the-best-decade-in-human-history-seriously/

I hope it helps you feel happier about the state of our world. We're really not doing so bad at all.

We live in a place of magic and mystery that is truly splendid.

Shiraz Grapes and the Deep North

Shiraz grapes - Barossa Valley

While the little shiraz grapes were getting ready to produce another batch of that lovely, anti-oxidant filled red wine, I was heading north to Alice Springs along the Stuart Highway, a trip I've done hundreds, if not a thousand times. 

If you've never visited South Australia's north or the Northern Territory, it's probably of great interest to see the thousands of square kilometres of nothing. After a few times it becomes fairly ordinary and perhaps boring.

There are several landscape and vegetation changes and some large salt lakes that are interesting to see and knowing that you are driving through the Woomera Rocket Range prohibited area is probably a kick to some people, although one never sees any rockets, UFOs or anything else.

Here's some footage of the vast emptiness within and around the Woomera Rocket Range.

If nothing else, it's an excellent road and in the Territory the speed limit is 130km/hr if you are happy to burn up a shipload of fuel at $1.49 or $2.07 per Litre at Erldunda in the Territory.

This trip, the only kangaroos I saw were road-killed, but I did see a huge perentie lizard and half a dozen frilled neck lizards on the road which I managed to avoid. No emus, a few horses, some cattle, and dozens of cars with NT number plates heading south for Christmas.

Those heading south to their loved ones probably hoped they'd avoid the 43° Celsius heat of Central Australia only to find that temperatures in Adelaide and other southern towns and cities are equally hot.

Summer isn't called the Silly Season in the Top End for nothing.

Robin

Hey Dad, can you pick up a few things?

This year, my wife Christina and I are returning to Alice Springs in Central Australia for Christmas. Our son, daughter and sole grandson live there and we had lived there for nearly 30 years before retiring.

Our daughter called and asked if we could "pick up a few things" for her.

Yes, we're happy to do that, but once we said yes, the "few things" expanded. The wine, the personal products, then came the furniture.

The furniture began with a lounge that converts into a bed for her spare room. Then became new drawers for our grandson's room.

We calculated the volume and decided it would just fit into our 6'x4' trailer and said no to another couple of bedside tables.

We loaded the trailer at IKEA and here it is ready to roll on our 1500 km journey north on Sunday next.

What we do for our kids eh.

Robin