Puberty Giggling

If perpetrated in your vicinity this is far worse than Puberty Blues!

Our day began in Ouyen with a walk round the very large sports centre to inspect the facilities.  (I say very large because I reckon you could fit several English villages into the oval alone.)

The area was particularly interesting with the history of the area's sporting teams being shown in a couple of ways.  The simplest was this sign showing how 6 clubs became 2 and then 1.  If one is looking for somewhere to dump a bit of sympathy think of Ouyen in the period from 1971 to 1996 when they had two teams, one wearing the same coloured guernsey as St Kilda AFC and the other, Melbourne AFC!  To make matters worse when those two clubs amalgamated before the 1997 season they chose to stick with Melbourne colours!  (Looking at the team's webpage it would appear that the Ouyen team are going a lot better than their big-city namesakes.)

 A less straightforward approach to the history is given by this set of decorated poles.  The height of the poles varies inversely according to the length of time since the club merged.  Thus the current club is the highest pole while the 6 originals are the shortest.  Each pole also has a brass plate outlining the club's achievements..

 These are the change sheds for the netball faculty of Ouyen United!

 At one end of the grandstand are the sheds for the Cricket Club, nicknamed the Rams.

 Alas poor Demons.

 The sun rose while we were out.

Over the fence from the footy oval was quite an elegant trotting track with a couple of pacers doing their stuff.  The one on the inside kept breaking!

I thought I should include one image of the camper in situ.

Following the arrival of White-breasted Woodswallows the previous evening the morning was graced by a pair of Major Mitchell Cockatoos.  They are known internationally as Pink Cockatoos for obvious reasons.  This image shows the pink of the chest but I couldn't capture the rather spectacular red and yellow crest.

We then had a brief visit to the auto-electrician to get the right turn indicator on the camper fixed up.  This was done in a very skillful and timely manner and many thanks are offered to the RACV agent in Ouyen.  He also explained the source of the problem which may need a further intervention before our next trip.

In Murrayville we paused to snap the Phantom sign, which I have enjoyed for more than 30 years ...

 .. and the official sign of the pub which I reckon is much newer.

We didn't see any Mallefowl, but did find some pelicans, wearing hi-vis jackets at the fruit-fly quarantine stop.  I can see why the Government keeps these places going (need to be seen to be doing something to protect the fruit growers; provide a nice little bit of employment for the local town) but given that there are about 100 roads that cross the border between South Australia and Victoria and only 2 have checkpoints (the other 2 sites are on the Eyre Highway to WA and the Barrier Highway to NSW) it is probably good politics but garbage policy.

While I am giving a serve to the SA Government I will set off an opening shot about the lack of road signs in useful places.  We were using information from Google Maps to navigate through the Adelaide Hills and not travelling too badly until we got to the top of Willunga Hill where the information we had about road names didn't match what was on the signs.  So we went down Old Willunga Hill and ended up in Willunga, where there was no sign to Port Willunga.

So we headed for the sea, passing through Aldinga Beach - about the worst housing development I have ever seen for sheer tackiness -and eventually found a caravan park (not the one we were looking for) but there was absolutely no-one around!  Eventually we found a sign to another Park and then noticed another .  This got us into the place we were looking for,  Very poor service to tourism.

Whatever.  We found our site and set up the camper.  It was a very full site and the quality of conversation evident from the two young women (my estimation of their age varied from 14 to 19)  in the tent behind us was banal in the extreme and included lots of giggling, immortalised in the title of this post!

We headed off into the more central part of the metropolis and noticed the mouth of the Onkaparinga River with very colourful cliffs attracting the evening colours.

 On the beach bait was being thrown into the sea, but as usual not much was being pulled out.

 One of these surfers seemed to have got the idea, the other less so.

 As we left a rather spiffy sunset became available.

We got into the city and had a very pleasant meal before setting off for the trek back to our little camper in the west.  This was in fact a very simple drive with the only slight trick being to pick the final turnoff.  This was managed and we piled into the camper for a good night's kip.

Awards time:

Bird of the Day: Major Mitchell Cockatoo- spiffy, first one seen for several years.
Bad taste of the Day: Aldinga Beach development
Art of the day: Very thin on the ground (or anywhere else today).  A statue of a pelican overlooking the Onkaparinga just prevented a non-award.
Scene of the Day: Ciffs of the Onkaparinga estuary

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