Phew, it seems I don’t have the killer ecoli bug that is killing so many in Hamburg. I am back up on my horse and feeling a lot better. Though goodness knows why? I googled remedies for this killer bug, and it suggested BRAT, ie bananas, rice, applesauce and toast. I duly followed it, then went on a tour-about at the weekend and promptly ate an apple doughnut, an apple pie, a Cornish pasty and an organic duck pie!

This is me who actually HATES pastry! Oh well, all is well and I am now fighting fit and full of the joys. Gloominess is such a necessary evil, for afterwards the world just takes on a new lightness.

On Saturday John and I drove down the Fleurieu Peninsula to a cute little town called Carrickalinga. Pretty countryside and we passed through the McLaren vineyard country and duly stopped to buy a case of Cleanskins. You get a delicious wine which has failed the ‘test’ so it’s sold off quite cheaply without a label. We bought a case of Sauvignon, and so far no complaints. John was very pleased with the giant bottle of port he managed to squeeze into the box as well! I can see some decadent lunches ahead.

On Sunday we headed north, away from the beaches into the great swathes of agricultural land, and we drove for miles and miles in a straight line.

Imagine the surprise when we saw this sign!

Desperate for a coffee we called into Tarlee, and found this rather nasty ‘Take Away and Deli’ that offered very old looking pies and cakes with cerise and luminous green icing. When we drove out, John said, ‘what the …was that?!’ and just on cue a sign appeared!

We drove on and on and came to Burra, a copper mining town that relives its heritage once a year, and everyone dresses up and pretends they have just arrived from Cornwall.

There was a giant machine made from blue gum and iron, and is called The Jigger. This was built to transport a water pump that was sent from Cornwall, way back when, and it took 2 months to get up the road from Port Adelaide. Not such lucrative years, but the mining did pick up later on. What was memorable for us was as we gazed at the scarred hillside, a real live wild kangaroo suddenly bounced past!

Went to my Writers meeting on Thursday and was absolutely entranced with the guest speaker, a lady called Christobel Mattingley. She has written so many books, and is at present working on her third biography. She told stories of her research and they became stories within stories and we all just sat spellbound. She told us about Edward Ebineezer Gostelow (wonderful name) and his passion for Australian birds, and then Adam Forster, who painted Australia’s wild flowers. The stories were threaded with snippets about Thistle Harris, (imagine naming a baby girl Thistle and her growing up to be a botanist!) and the tragic story of an English woman who became a famous bird painter married an Australian and just prior to sailing for the Great Southern Land contracted measles and became deaf, so she never heard the sounds of the birds she painted.

You can google Christobel, and there is even a little you tube link where she is talking about the bird man, EE Gostelow.

After Christobel’s talk, Heather, one of our ladies told a story about Sydney James Cook. He was an aborigine boy adopted by Dr Charles Duguid who came to Australia as a ship’s surgeon in 1911 and then migrated the following year. Sydney joined the family around 1930 and was brought up and educated alongside Dr Duguids other 2 children. Well Heather apparently lived next door to Sydney  and she and her friend used to play with him when they were little. She remembers daring him to eat a worm for a penny(because aborigines like that sort of thing) and he did…loads of them! (quite smart, he knew how to make a small fortune!) and then he threw a big stone over the wall, nearly killing her friend, the irony was that scratched on the mighty boulder were the words ‘I love you.’ She said she saw him about fifty years later, quite unexpectedly. She and her husband were taking a drive in the centre of Australia and they saw this tall aborigine man with a stick, standing like a statue. They stopped and spoke to him, and were amazed at the ‘Oxford’ English reply, very cultured. It was Sydney. He had returned to his own land and his own people.

Well the meeting closed with Elizabeth, (the 90 year old treasurer) telling us she couldn’t bank the week’s takings until next week as she was going for an eye op.

Last night we watched a documentary about Australian cattle being transported to Indonesian abattoirs. I am still reeling with shock, revulsion and pity. Conditions were the worst you could imagine and the cruelty was beyond words. The journalist responsible for most of the filming was Lyn White and I do hope her report does some good. The Greed for Gold has a lot to answer for.

On a lighter note John’s colleague, Dean is getting me a fishing rod. I am very excited as I have great plans of emptying the ocean around the jetty. He is so optimistic he said he’d supply the recipes as well!

Tomorrow is the 1st June and it is officially winter.