The Black Stump

HAHA! Finally a photo has uploaded for me! Hmm... maybe Blogger only likes me uploading one at a time! :S That could take a while.

"Hi" again everyone. Here I am at Paringa, a little Riverland town not far from Renmark where the Black Stump lives! (It is the large, round wooden thing behind me. It looks a bit like a wooden cobweb in my opinion.) We have a saying in Australia, "Beyond the black stump" which means: beyond the middle of nowhere, or something like that! For example the phrase can be used like this, "Oh you are travelling to Alice Springs are you? That's a bit beyond the Black Stump isn't it?!"

This "Black Stump" occurred because of one man's quirky sense of humour one day when he was out on the River Murray! However, I'm pretty sure it would've taken more than one man to haul this wooden stump out of the river and transport it to the front of his house. This is where the stump is now located.

I visited this stump not last week but the week before when I was on holidays. I came back to the Riverland for a few days to see my family and our current exchange student Jenny. I say current as she is our 10th exchange student so far. Jenny comes from Germany and is staying with our family for 10 months. She arrived in Australia in February this year.

Below are 2 photos of Jenny and me on the River Murray Queen, a paddle steamer permanently moored in my hometown Waikerie.

The photo above features an interesting koala sign we saw on the way to Paringa. There is a Koala sanctuary not far from that sign on the other side of the bridge. We visited the sanctuary for 10 minutes or so but didn't spot any koalas which wasn't very surprising... we were right next to the highway! The poor koalas probably hid in fright when they heard us roaring down the drive in our big mechanical beast (my parent's Ford)!

Since seeing this first koala sign I have spotted a couple of others around the Burnside area in Adelaide yesterday. However, the signs only featured an outline of a koala, they weren't quite as fancy as the koala sign in the photo above.

Anyway Toodlepip for now, I heard an old Englishman say that on TV last night so I thought I'd try it out... I don't think it suits me really. Oh well how about see-ya later? XD

*Katz*