There And Back Again; Prologue

I must give absolute and total credit for the blog series title to Mr Tolkien. I certainly hope that he's not spinning too fast in his grave at my using his title, and I hope that his son is throwing a hissy fit right now (long story).

This is the story of YT (Yours Truly) and WP (Wifey-Poo; otherwise known as The Most Wonderful Woman In The Entire World --please don't be upset ladies) and our trip down to Naracoorte and back.

Prologue: A Long Expected Departure

To give you some background about the Naracoorte caves and myself, I thought you may be interested to know that I've been wanting to visit these suckers before I even arrived down in South Oz.

WP and I were hitch-ed back in '99 in Squarebanks. And for me birfday that year she gave me several "items of interest" about where I'd be heading: South Oz. One of these was The Book of The Road (as clearly distinct from say... The Book Of The Dead which I'm sure she had a hand in writing). Loads of stuff about everything you'd see. Sorta like the Antipodeans' answer to The Milepost.

One thing that caught my eye was a picture of the Naracoorte Caves. "Wow!" thought I. "What a great place to see!"

But why? Well, here's a pic from the Victoria Cave that I took:
Just give it a click to view it full size --although I've already shrunk it down to 1800 pix wide from it's original. BTW the chamber is about 8 to 10 feet high. This is BIG. You will see a great many more pics of the caves as you read the story, no worries.

Fast-forward TEN years and we still hadn't gotten on down to "The Limestone Coast". Hmmmm, time to remedy this situation, eh? Why is it called The Limestone Coast? Well, I'll be giving you various geologic, geomorphologic, paleontologic, agrilogic (ok, I made that last one up) tidbits as the trip progresses. Oh, and you'll also find out why there is a full-size complete LandRover up on a pole in Keith.

How's that for some interest-piquing?

Here's the overall map of the trip. We started just south of Adelaide in Sturt (Sturt doesn't even show on this map, ahem) and went to Naracoorte (which does show on the map) and it's surrounding environs. We then went back by a different route.




Of course that map doesn't show didly-squat. Here, I've fixed it for you:


Doesn't it make sense now? Or does my kindergarten crayon colouring skillz show onto the map... just slightly maybe?

As you can see from the map, we took the north road down to Naracoorte, and then came back along the coast. See? Isn't it obvious?

Chapter One will be coming up next. Sturt to Strathalbyn!

Stay Tuned