Harold Cazneaux was a photographic retoucher. The itchy-footed lad tired quickly of studio work in Adelaide, and longed for the scenic beyond. He travelled to the Flinders Ranges in 1937 and there he found a giant tree.
What struck him most were the bent fingers of its roots clinging grimly to a creek bank. For […]
Better off drinking Adelaide’s famous beer, than the city’s infamous tapwater. To see the plight played out, take a trip to the SA Brewery where a dozen citizens will be collecting water from the coin-operated spigot.
Four wells lie beneath the brewery, drawing off the Wilunga Aquifer. The bounty used to be free, but nowadays every […]
A pelican stands at the knee of a novelist. The pelican is called Mr Percival – star of the book and movie, Storm Boy - while the writer is Mr Colin Thiele, the story’s creator.
Born in 1920, and sadly dying just a month ago, Thiele was a literary pioneer who gave rural Australia […]
Ray Myers is a farmer with a sense of the ludicrous. Exposed last month in Time magazine, the ex-Sydneyite cultivates flamingoes, wombats, pixies and kangaroos in the smelting heat of Port Pirie, at the southern edge of the Flinders Ranges.
Nicknamed a Gnome Farm, the Myers property is lousy with concrete warriors, toadstools, dwarves and lizards, […]
Not just a lobster, but a Big Lobster, the fiberglass landmark that dominates the foreshores of Kingston, South Australia.
For a lazy half mil, you could own this land’s largest crustacean, a six-legged complex complete with gift shop, restaurant, claws and antennae.
To glimpse your prospective pet, visit Big Things in our links section, or make […]
February 1802 wasn’t too serene for Matthew Flinders. Entering the Great Australian Bight, beyond the Eyre Peninsula, our island’s first circumnavigator struck a gale. Knowing his limits, he led the Investigator into the lee of Waldegrave Island where the crew stayed restless all night. Come morning he named the inlet Anxious Bay.
And if that wasn’t […]
Despite its name, Lower Light is not a dimmer switch, but a farming community along the Port Wakefield Road in SA, some 100kms northwest of Adelaide.
The nearest town is Dublin where a toxic dump was proposed by state government back in 2003, though not if Steve Jones has his way.
A Lower Light farmer, Jones spent […]
Cornish miners burrowed into Burra, chasing copper in the 1850s. But the principal snag was water, and not a decent pump to be found.
So the mining company imported an ‘engine house’ from Cornwall, essentially a pump about the size of Liechtenstein.
Of course, this created the next problem. No vehicle in the colony could haul the […]
Loop-the-loops, snap rolls, lazy eights and a vertical chandelle may not be your cup of tea, but there’s no way any tourist brave enough to take the Aerobatic Super Decathlon with Adelaide Biplanes will be able to sip a cuppa en route.
Based at Aldinga, a short drive south of the city proper, Adelaide Biplanes […]
VICTOR HARBOUR, SA – Encounter Bay has two meanings. The original encounter occurred between Matthew Flinders and Baudin in 1802.
The more modern rendezvous dates back to 1980 when Chris Tapscott, a teacher at Victor Harbour High, reckoned his Year 7 kids would benefit from encountering the Anangu people.
Headmaster Noel Young agreed. Suddenly the classroom […]