Down by the sea...

It's getting hotter.
This week has been getting hotter by the day, today will be 38C, tomorrow will be few degrees hotter still and the town has seemingly gone to sleep.

 The only activity is very early in the morning when we rush about getting fuel, groceries etc.
 The rest of the day the town will be deserted, no cars on the streets, no one walking or jogging, no one to be seen.

During the week some of the shops remain busy, especially those in the Mall where old people and those without air conditioning go to spend their days in the relative cool. But today is Sunday....

I was out at 6am to take a few shots of the marina and the sun rising, it's calm and clear and when that sun comes up there will be no cooling breeze, no wafting clouds, just relentless heat...
I'll be at home
trying to stay cool...


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Ok, Lets take the tour….

This is the reason why the town is here, the pelletizing plant in the foreground, harbor behind that and the Steel making plant behind that. Also there is a Rolling Mill off to the side and the mine that feeds the whole catastrophe 60km away. The rusty red is the iron ore dust. (Iron ore is basically rust) One entire end of the town is the same colour and you can guess the colour of our house dust?

This is where the town started about 80 years ago and that’s why this is where the largest trees are found. Below the protection of the hill is the town Gardens (big trees) and the town spread on the flats beyond that. (ancient floodplain)

That’s the sea there, several degrees warmer up here in Spencer Gulf where the water is shallow and the sun hot. It's also several percent more salty because of the evaporation rate. (and also why we have a thriving salt pan industry) 

Outside the town looking back. This is typical of the area, low hills with ancient floodplains between, a few low bushes and hardy trees. At least we hardly ever got lost and it's an awesome area for motorbike and 4WDing.

If I turn around to the North we see… more of the same across to the next hill 12km away. Australia originally had huge mountain ranges, over eons they wore away to dust. The dust washed toward the coasts making these huge sand and silt flats. We also have alluvial Gold and Diamonds…the hard part is finding them in all that sand.

..and from the top of that hill….

Typical of the better bits, the red sands of central Australia visible between the struggling Saltbush (light grey) and the darker and useless Bluebush. (dark green/blue) Lucky for Australia *Saltbush is good Sheep food so we managed to build a Wool and Meat trade from this. The trees both alive and dead are Myall trees, long lived and so gnarled and hard you cant do anything with them. (pretty much the only reason theyre still here)

* Saltbush tackles the hard salty soils and horrible temperatures by excreting salt through their leaves to act as sunscreen. You can (and we do) eat the leaves to increase your salt intake. (only take leaves from the top of the bush where theres likely to be less pee)

You can tell the approximate age of the Myall by their shape, this one is over 150 years but not yet 400 years old. Even small fires will kill them and they need a good flood to create seeds, they sometimes go 50 or more years between flowerings and seed setting. For these reasons they are totally protected. The last big flowering was 1974 and I can see the young trees from that year all around. (between 6 to 10 feet tall)

This older Myall is somewhere over 400 years but not yet 600 years old. To put that into perspective, Australia was settled in the 1770's, that’s less than 250 years ago when this tree was middle aged..

..and now I must tell you that these photos were taken in August 2012 at the end of our Winter (our rainy season) when the trees were at their best and every bush had put on it's next years growth.
I keep promising myself to go out in the 48-54Celcius Summer to get pics of what it's really like out here but I keep chickening out..besides, people really do die out there....




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Tuna Toss

A few decades ago fishermen threw their Tuna from the hold of the boat to the dock and from the dock to their trucks. Somehow this transformed into a sport. This is Australia….

Basically you throw a 10 kg Tuna (22Lbs) as far as you can.

10 kg is the weight of a full household plastic bucket.

Of course the Tuna is made of rubber these days, but weighted exactly to 10kg.

You may doubt me but I can assure you that this is a serious event, this year Australia's national ABC TV sent a crew to film the event and there was a TV crew there from Japan also. 
The Japanese have a strong affiliation with the iconic Tuna and they always send a TV crew to cover this event. This year there was even an official Japanese team for the Womans Tuna Toss and competitors from all across the world.

Your average woman throws up to 5 metres, your average man can throw up to 7 or 8 metres, sportsmen throw close to 20 metres and the Australian record is 37 metres. (thrown by our then Australian Olympic Hammer thrower)

Every year there are those who fall over or muff their throw and you can see their embarrassment as they skulk away. 

*This young woman is Australia's current champion female Hammer thrower and threw further than all but three men, she threw close to 20 metres and won the womans division. Check out the muscles on her…

*Her boyfriend is this young man, the current mens Champion Hammer thrower who threw 32 metres.

 

*If you are thinking this female judge (in the red shirt) is a little stout you would be right, for some reason the male judges all wear female wigs… 

look! I'm Australian and even I don’t get this one…

...and it landed here, just in front of me.

* This is the pitch without using camera zoom, it shows just how far it is from the throwing point at the high centre netting 45 metres to the water line just one step behind me. The red flag shows last years best throw.

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Tunarama

Port Lincoln in South Australia has always been the centre of Tuna fishing in Australia. Originally Tunarama was a small festival for the Blessing of the Fishing Fleet, it has grown over 53 years to a big tourist event with a few quirky and unusual events that have survived the years.

One of these is the Boat Build and Race.

They give you two much to thin sheets of plywood, two lengths of way to flimsy baton, some wire, screws, nails, two tubes of glue, a saw, a drill and hammer. Then they give you and your one helper just two hours to make your own boat. The boat gets to sit in the sun for a few hours for the glue to nearly dry and then you race…

The result is of course hilarious.

This year there was a team from France, a team from the Netherlands, an all girl team, two father and son teams, a father and daughter team and the usual assortment of misfits and weirdo's.

Let the madness begin….

 The father and son team in the background, dad using the son as a weight to hold down their ply wood.

One of several Boy/Girlfriend teams. I fully expected a few arguments but sadly they remained well composed.










The word EWE means a female sheep, this boat EWES was built by the only all female team. As you can see they ran out of time and the boat floated but would not carry passengers so they swam it out and back. They didnt win but won the hearts of the huge crowd.

 Had there been any waves at all most of these craft would not have made the trip but as you can see this year the weather was great and the water flat calm

 Only one boat turned over (sad face)

Over the coming weeks we will visit the Tuna Toss, Tug of War and the Slippery Pole events. (Im still sore from the laughing...)

No More Mr. Nice Guy

Back when I first joined my current race team we ran Standard Sedans in Speedway, the new team had never raced before and my experience was limited to six years in a Super Modified team.

We started off all enthusiastic and helpful, lending tools and giving a hand where we could but before long we found people taking advantage, it all went wrong when we had about a thousand dollars worth of tools stolen while we were watching our car race; even though the pits were packed with people no one saw anything…. Hmm!

We put a lot of time and effort into our car and started to do very well, soon we had complaints of cheating laid against us, the marshals checked the car and even went to the trouble of making us have the engine stripped and certified, of course we were cleared but the team talked of nothing else for weeks, valuable time lost!

A few seasons passed and we changed to Formula 500 which is a far more competitive class, we bought one secondhand car and new motor here in Australia and soon ordered a new American car/motor package. We invented tools when we needed something special, like Formula One style car lifters and movers and had our own machine shop make and modify all manner of bits and pieces to make the cars lighter, stronger and faster. Our aim originally was to manufacture and sell these parts to offset the huge costs of inventing them but soon we found people photographing our equipment and making copies.

We lost two seasons with a few motor explosions and a couple of bad crashes. Last season a few days after a full knee reconstruction our driver had to be carried to the car, placed inside and the cockpit packed tight with foam so he couldn’t be injured, he didn't race but only circulated…all to get the few points for turning up.

This year we have two new American fuel injected methanol motors to prove. Two, fast but raw motors that just didn't go the way they should... but exactly the same as another dozen new motors bought and used by other teams in Australia. Unlike the others we didn't run them, instead we drilled holes all over one motor and fitted it with dozens of sensors, tested, modified and retested, over and over until we got this little 634cc four cylinder motor going as well as we could.

Last weekend we raced our new motor for the first time and gave the rest of the Australian Formula 500 teams a big wake up call. Our car went much better than anything anyone could throw at us and we won the night and the final by half a lap.

Between races we kept the car covered with tarps and refused to allow anyone to see or photograph it. There are only a couple of things you could actually see that we've changed on the outside but the team has learned valuable lessons from the past and this year we are playing the same mind games the others had used against us. Already there are calls of cheating and again the marshals will check and audit our cars but this time we are laughing about it….

*I think I found the problem....




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