I’m cooking up a post on Australia. It needs to simmer. In the meantime, here’s a taste of our past couple weeks on the road…
Our beach-front place in Port MacDonnell, South Australia faced this beach. A picture may be “worth a thousand words,” but it will thankfully never transmit a smell. Rotting seaweed and salty damp furniture was the smell of “home” for a week. The seaweed didn’t make for great beach swimming and foiled the fishing efforts too. The salty air even untuned the guitar. Beach life. Humph.The sunrise walks at “Port Mac” were pretty nice though, and the local library had a free-to-use pool table next to the Maritime Museum.We started our “worldschooling” the same day as the boys’ mates in New South Wales went back to school. Blogging, journaling, and handwriting practice. Spanish, reading, and maths too. We are finding our groove…IXL is our online program for English and Math. The boys were not coping well with the way it regresses you in a practice when you get one wrong answer even when you are generally demonstrating understanding. (Screams, rants, tears dripping onto pages of long division, red-faced frustration all around!) We decided to search “Why does IXL take you back so far?” The predictive text in the search got us all crying with laughter. We are clearly not alone on this one.Nearby Mount Gambier has The Blue Lake, and it looks synthetically dyed blue. It’s actually grey for half the year. Over a few days each November, it turns blue when the increasing heat causes calcium carbonate to form crystals that scatter blue light. It goes back to grey around March. Rock Lobsters are a big industry in these parts. The price tags are big too- $50-80 for half a lobster. We just shared a lobster sandwich between us.Victor Harbor, SA was the next stop for the weekend. We took a walk to nearby Granite Island. The “driver” of the horse-drawn tram may have been heckled by an animal-loving boy shouting, “Shame on you!”A windy walk with great granite climbing……and tree climbingA moon-lit night walk back to Granite Island in wild winds did not end with any penguin sightings. They eluded us… again!Sticks are one of our favourite ways of “touching grass.” We have a growing collection of beloved sticks used for various purposes. Some of them have come from our first stop in Toora. Hard good-byes await us in Sydney.Aldinga Beach, SA had water so still we could skip rocks. It became a normal surfy beach after a couple days. You can also drive on this beach, which is a very odd experience. It’s like one of those cultural rules you don’t really know is a rule until someone breaks it, and your insides revolt. This might be the highlight of our trip for me so far. Tree sap. “Kino” is the proper name for this “botanical gum.” Our Aldinga Beach AirB&B was right next to a nature conservation area called “The Scrub.” You wouldn’t likely even notice the kino, but once you start to look, it is everywhere, and it is gorgeous! We all became addicted to finding unique pieces of this glowing substance. Someone was always asking to go to The Scrub.The Human HeartThe production of the kino is actually the tree’s way of fighting off boring insects. When the bug makes a hole, the tree fills it with the sticky sap. It kills the insect and plugs the hole. Then it hardens into a little gem.Lots of “Treasures” in Aldinga BeachThe Fleurieu Peninsula, which might be our next home, is also wine country. McLaren Vale is here. Grape vines and olive trees are everywhere.A valentine for a girl back in New South WalesA stop in Adelaide to visit a lovely relative for lunch gave us the chance to take in some artwork of a family legend: Kiron, an Indian artist of amazing ability and a prolific collection of work.
That’s all for now, folks! Thank you for donating your time to check on us.
Thankyou Dede thankyou….your posts are captivating…I feel like I’m there with you on your journey, heck, I could even smell the seaweed!!! I’ll be laughing for a long time about IXL, and I, like you, LOVE the Kino!!! And that little Valentine’s card….well, my heart is bursting!!! The whole lot is just fantastic!! 🤗
Hurry up Dede and write another post, I can barely wait!!! Thankyou Dede thankyou!!! Xoxox
Mapping the Gap 
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