The first inkling of what Ayers Rock-Uluru might look like is actually from a mountain you pass on the way there. Here the country is flat. Dead flat. The only undulations in the landscape are from sand dunes that have been blown hither and thither, so you can see for miles in any direction from the top of one of these dunes and in amongst those dunes are huge large white sun-baked pans. Here is a flat flat landscape with not much to break the monotony, but for t...

This is a place where the Law arrived, unwanted and unbidden, 10 years ago. And it definitely arrived with a bang! When the new police station was built and ready to be occupied, it was destroyed in an explosion, later attributed to mining explosives! According to an old timer that we met, there was a Law, but it was Coober Pedy Law and it was meted out, as and when necessary. Those that lived here knew where the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable w...

The further from the moderate and temperate coastal regions you go, the more sparsely populated the landscape becomes. As you head further northwards in South Australia the landscape changes from the usually green and cool south (but actually now they are having a drought and just the croplands, vines and orchards get watered, so things are looking a little thirsty) to the rugged semi-arid to the dry Red Centre of the famous Outback. In these places you want to...

Australia has some very famous wine regions. Names like Hunter Valley in New South Wales, Margaret's River in Western Australia and, of course, Barossa Valley in South Australia. Where we were heading! What a way to spend a Sunday afternoon! Tasting wine in some of Australia's famous cellars! Fantastic! Not to get stuck into a bottle of wine or three would be criminal! After all, we are actually doing some serious R & D here......seriously, we are hard at wor...

Nothing in Australia is small. Things are big, massive. The main island is colossal and distances are huge. There are vast "empty" tracts of land between places of interest and towns. Here is an island that has three time zones; where those on the East side (where most of the population lives) forget about those on the West side because they are so "behind" the times (Actually, they are 4 hours behind when various states employ their daylight ...