It is very hot here although not as hot as it could be. Anne and I have been ‘helping’ Josh with an adult jigsaw – one that he chose and is possibly the most difficult one in the house. We have also watched the first Hobbit film and I have been to have my hair cut. It’ll be fine when I’ve washed the spray out! Not an active day then.

Tomorrow I start the next bit of my journey – although I am not expecting Gandalf and 12 dwarves to turn up on the doorstep to accompany me.

Tuesday

I have managed to go 30km or so down the coast to Victor Harbor and am staying in a picturesque hotel built in 1906, and, I must admit, looks as if it hasn’t been updated much since. I don’t have air conditioning although I do have a fan. This is a picture of a similar one down the road.

Victor Harbor is a holiday resort with a nice beach and a horse tram! Originally built to load wool coming down the Murray River onto clippers to go to England, it now works entirely for tourists. It’s on rails so the horse doesn’t have to work as hard as you’d think.

The sculpture below is made out of canoe paddles and appears to have Josh imprisoned inside it.

Andy, Josh and I went to look at Carrickalinga Beach (reputedly the best in South Australia) and had coffee with Anne and her mate from the ambulance – they volunteer on a Tuesday.

It may be the best beach in South Australia, but it is also a haunt of great white sharks. Apparently a couple of years ago, a girl was playing in a canoe when a shark tipped her out of it. Her Dad and brother were fishing in an aluminium boat a little bit away and they drove over at speed. Luckily the shark had got itself caught round a rope and the father reached over it and hauled his daughter in. The shark got itself free but they had gone by then.

There is also a large chunk of concrete and plastic sticking out of the sea about 1 km from land. This is apparently a wave machine which was being towed on floats to somewhere south near Melbourne. They didn’t balance it properly and it sank. That was five years ago and the remains of the company (they went bust) have been arguing with the insurance ever since. Once they’ve sorted that out, it will be left as an artificial reef.