Thursday, November 22, 2012

Thu 22 Nov - Home, Manly NSW

Well, it is 4.45pm and we are back home in Manly again. It has been quite a journey, hasn't it?

We've visited some pretty special places and met some interesting people.

We felt that that some crappy awards were in order after all this road-trip, so here they are.

First the positive awards:

  • Best hiking: Flinders Ranges, diverse range of trails, superbly marked - also best views
  • Most interesting national park: Mutawintji National Park, some 150km northeast of Broken Hill. This is true outback.
  • Positive surprise town: Portland, Victoria. We knew nothing about this town beforehand. Cool town with a town seal in the harbour, cool surroundings, Great South West Walk nearby,
  • Unexpected fun and quirky town: Peterborough, SA, aka Steamtown. A former railway junction, reinventing itself with a rail "sound and light show" aka movie documentary, run and organized by a German bloke
  • Best wine district: Clare Valley, except for Clare town. Cool vineyards (in particular, Sevenhill), cool conversion of old rail tracks into Riesling Trail, a 25km biking or hiking stretch between Clare and Auburn
  • Best food (outside of Di's cooking): La Scala Italian Restaurant in Griffith, a local institution
  • Funniest menu item: Masallas in Broken Hill with Chicken AK-47 curry and its 30 chillies attached vs Beef Vindaloo with 3 chillies
  • Best Elvis exhibition: Parkes, well, where else...? Well, since my baby left...
  • Best belly laugh: Grampians camp ground, when a couple of abseilers returned to camp one day and found their previous quiet spot surrounded by a school bus load of teenagers and their tents. The abseilers moved quick smart to the other side of the campground
Then, well, the other "awards"...

  • Place with most overweight and unattractive people: Broken Hill's Tourist Park
  • Least interesting town where we spent a night: Port Augusta, SA - gateway to the west... And north... And...
  • Least interesting town - no overnight, we changed our mind once we got there: Tailem Bend, SA, a highway junction
The Carlen family will return in early January 2013 for more blogging from the road in North America and Europe. Until then, Ciao.

Ouch...

With apologies to Russell Coight for some of inserts above...

No photos today, sorry.

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