Travels with a Tick Magnet: Adelaide emulates Dar es Salaam

Heading out on our dog walk on 24 May, I heard a loud clapping noise coming from the powerlines above our accommodation. It was a pair of Crested Pigeons which on first sighting were doing the usual chest-puffing tail-raising display behaviour. Then they moved closer together and appeared to strike each other with their wings.

This happened several times. I've never seen them hit one one another before and wonder if they were making love or war?

Moving on down the road a sight resembled the start of a joke "How many tradies does it take to ...?"

From the conversation we could hear it seemed they were working out how to tap into the power line for some purpose.

We had a pleasant walk around the suburb without any great excitements to report. After finishing our breakfasts we headed off towards McLaren Vale. I carefully (I thought) consulted Google Maps as to the route and we headed off towards South Rd where absolute chaos was occurring.

There were massive roadworks in situ (but of course no work happening. We spent about 5 minutes stationary wondering what all the Plodmobiles were doing- at least 4 were visible: a number usually only seen outside a McDonalds with a special on jumboburgers.

Eventually one of the plods wandered over and stopped cars in our lane from turning right on to South Rd (first red arrow in image). So we headed a bit up towards Flinders U and did a u-turn, blue arrow, intending to turn left onto South Rd (second red arrow). Also blocked by the fxxxh. So after a minimum delay of 20 minutes, back to Marion Rd and on to the expressway. (I have since checked Google more closely and that is where we should have gone all along: dooohhhh!)

However we have no idea what the problem was. There seemed to be more plodmobiles a little further down South Rd so possibly a prang down there.Why were the stupid cops (sorry about the tautology) allowing through traffic on South Rd but blocking turns from Sturt Rd? Given the amount of delay and the number of cops involved why is there no coverage of this in any media. Welcome to South Australia!

Basically the whole thing reminded me of the traffic jams in Dar es Salaam approaching the Selander Bridge (although the cops there were better organised and more helpful).

We eventually made it to McLaren- in time for lunch which was a pepper pie and a Kitchener bun. The pie was pretty good, rating 8 on the official scale. They lost a point because it was all mince - no steak in sight - and the crust was a tad over-cooked so got a zero for that category. We had a look round the houses of the Vale but what we could see where all modernish basic dwellings so cut our losses and headed for Johnson Rd and the Pirramimma winery.

This is a long established family winery in the area and we have found it to sell pretty good wines at reasonable prices with no bullshit. They seemed to to want $5 a head for tasting (offset against purchases) to dissuade people just coming out for free booze. We weren't asked for coin, and did buy 2.5 dozen bottles so it wouldn't have been an issue anyway.

The vines looked attractive.

On our way towards the beach we came across some Ibis posing nicely.

Its unusual to get both common species so nicely aligned.

Then on to the Maslins Beach area. Here is the walk we did.

This was taken at the Northern turning point and looks down on the beach where naked persons can be observed in warmer weather. There is a reason we only go there when its cold! The focus is the interesting geology of the cliffs.

As we descended to the beach on the Southern side of the headland a couple of dolphins were visible. Or at least their fins were visible.

Some more cliffs.

The lowest level on the cliffs was saturated with small shells. If this level survives erosion for a few million years so archaeologists are going to get very excited.