Bart Bear's Blog

It seems only a few weeks ago that we were on the "Queen Mary 2", but in fact it was 8 months ago! Time sure gets away, specially when you do a few trips in the meantime. Anyhow, did I mention that the QM is big? Really Big? Well, here's a couple of photos that show just how big it is. The one on the left was taken while we were docked in Adelaide. Just compare the size of the ship with the cars, and remember that most of the cars are much closer. The other photo was taken looking along one of the corridors on a cabin deck. That tiny little speck of light in the middle of the photo is the window in the door at the far end of the corridor. It's a sizable walk along the corridor, and the cabin decks don't go all the way from bow to stern. Big? It's absolutely huge. Time for the Oldies to think about our next cruise, I reckon.

Labels: Adelaide, boats, cruising

For some strange reason, Mum giggles every time that she sees this photo. When I ask her what's so funny she says "Just look at the noses". OK, both the aeroplane and I have round, black noses, but mine is small and cute while the aeroplane can hide behind it's big nose. The 'plane is a De Havilland Sea Venom and you can see it at the South Australian Aviation Museum at Port Adelaide. Sea Venoms were Australia's naval fighters from 1956 to 1967. They were the fighter wing on HMAS Melbourne until they were replaced by Douglas Skyhawks. Fortunately, other Sea Venoms have been saved from the scrapheap and you can see one at most of the aviation museums in Australia. Of course, this small bear is unique and you only see me if you are at the same museum at the same time as me.

Labels: Adelaide, aircraft, South Australia

Whenever we are in Adelaide we go out to Port Adelaide. This is a great place with museums full of boats, trains, planes and army vehicles. One of the best things to do is to go on a boat trip down the river. Along the way you pass all sorts of boats, including a place where there are lots of wrecked ones that have been towed up a creek and left to rot. You go past the place where Australian submarines are made, the big power stations, and old historic buildings like the quarantine station. But the thing that most people want to see are the Port river dolphins. These are a family of dolphins that have adopted the river as their home. About 250 bottlenose dolphins live in the river and the estuary. They have had a tough time in the past coping with polluted water because this is an industrial area, but the South Australian government has made the area a dolphin sanctuary and now the river is much cleaner. On the day that we went dolphin watching we hadn't even left the wharf when two dolphins swam past, between me and the tug boat moored in front of our big cruise boat. I thought that was pretty good and that I would see lots more dolphins during the cruise. No such luck. Over the next two hours we saw lots of other interesting stuff but absolutely no dolphins. I guess they were all hiding and giggling at us. If you are in Adelaide, go on the dolphin trip down the river. It is full of interest and, with luck, you might even see dolphins.

Labels: Adelaide, animals, boats, South Australia

The best railway museum that I have been to is the one at Port Adelaide in South Australia. There are lots of big engines there and all sorts of carriages and you can climb into lots of them. These wheels are at the entrance to the museum. They are from one of the first steam engines to run on the line between Adelaide city and Port Adelaide. The rocks that I am sitting on are from the original Port Adelaide station platform. I love museums. It is great to see the sort of things that people used way back even before Dad was my age. I do wish that one of the engines that the wheels came from had survived, they were built in 1856 and those really old ones look fantastic.

Labels: Adelaide, South Australia, train

Yes. there's definitely something fascinating about trains, especially big tough steam trains. Well, here I am sitting on the front of one of the toughest steam trains in Australia. It is a South Australian 400 class Beyer-Garratt engine and it spent its working life hauling huge loads of stuff from the mines at Broken Hill and Leigh Creek down to the smelters and ports in South Australia. Now it is one of the exhibits in the SA Railway Museum at Port Adelaide. Garratts were strange beasts. To get the maximum power out of a steam boiler there were two engines coupled to it, one at each end of the boiler. That made Garratts look a bit different but they could really pull. There were some cases when diesel locos got stuck on frosty tracks on the Sydney-Canberra line and Garratts could unstick the whole train, diesel engine and all the fully-loaded carriages, with no trouble at all. I would love to have been able to drive one of these puffing monsters, but they are all retired now. Do go to railway museums whenever you are near one. Trains are lovely things and museums like the SA one do a magnificent job in preserving old ones for small bears to daydream over.

Labels: Adelaide, South Australia, train

This lighthouse is in the Maritime Museum at Port Adelaide. It hasn't always been there. It spent the first part of its life, from 1875 to 1901, on a platform near the entrance to the port river. It was then moved to South Neptune Island where it stayed until 1984. The lighthouse keepers at South Neptune had a really tough life, some of them went mad and a couple of them were washed away by big waves. Today it is a lighthouse that you can visit and see how the old lighthouses worked. I went through it before getting onto this boat, ready to cruise up the river to the mouth, looking for the special dolphins that live in the Adelaide river.

Labels: Adelaide, boats, lighthouse, South Australia

You know, people just don't consider small bears when they design aircraft. This Dakota is in the South Australian Aviation Museum and the door was open, so obviously I was meant to climb in and see if I could fly it out of there. The only trouble is the pitch of the entry steps. It was a real struggle getting up them and by the time I had, Mum noticed I was missing and collared me. So I still don't know what it looks like in the cockpit of the greatest passenger/cargo aircraft ever built, and haven't had a chance to try my hands at the controls.

Labels: Adelaide, aircraft, South Australia

I met this guy down in the Barossa Valley in South Australia. He doesn't say much and he doesn't move very fast but he has a very important job to do. He is the one who keeps the crows, corellas and cockatoos from eating all the grapes in this vineyard. That's important because if the birds win then there is not as much wine for the oldies (not just my oldies, but everyone's). When I met him he was leaning up against the lamp post and there wasn't a bird in sight for him to chase away. We had a talk about the importance of having the right stuffing. I reckon my fibre and bead stuffing is better than his loose straw, but he says that his is more traditional. Maybe, but small birds can't pull bits of mine loose to make their nests with.

Labels: Adelaide, South Australia

This strange looking thing is actually one of the most important "aeroplanes" ever built. It is a Link Trainer. The first one was built by Edwin Link in 1929. He wanted to build something that would teach new pilots to fly by instruments, without the expense and danger of using real aircraft. The result was the first real flight simulator. It looks a bit rough and ready compared to today's high-tech simulators but it was so successful that hundreds of thousands of pilots were trained on them during World War 2. They were used in the USA, Australia, Britain, Canada, USSR and even Germany and Japan. This one is in the South Australian Aviation Museum. As you can see in the top photo, it looks reasonably large when there is only a small bear in the cockpit, although it must have been cramped for full-sized people. Of course, I got Dad to make me a model of one as soon as we got home. You can see that the Link is really quite small because the 1/72 scale model is much smaller than the small bear. Models are great, almost as good as real aeroplanes.

Labels: Adelaide, aircraft, models, South Australia

I found a train just the right size for me. It is in the South Australian Railway Museum at Port Adelaide, along with lots of big ones. This one is the size that is used in miniature railways all over the world. Normally they are driven by big people riding on the tender. I wonder why nobody has ever thought to train small bears as engine drivers? I would be good at it, so I asked the museum people to let me have this engine when they don't need it any more and Dad can lay some track for me.

Labels: Adelaide, South Australia, train

Sometimes authorities are mean to small bears. They try and keep you out of interesting places by building fences that take so long to climb over that Mum or Dad always catch you and haul you back. This fence is around the pilot station at Port Adelaide. Now I really do want to be a pilot. I watched the pilots in the helicopters and it doesn't look too hard to fly them, but I don't get any chance to try for myself. But here is a building that is just for pilots. I wanted to get in there and offer my services. Dad caught me and told me that I would get into trouble for climbing over a fence with that sort of sign on it. I never read signs if they won't let me do what I want to. Anyway, it turns out that the pilots in there are for boats, not helicopters. I like boats too, so one way or another I will be a pilot someday.

Labels: Adelaide, boats, climbing, South Australia, trouble

Here I am at the South Australian Aviation Museum. This is a museum that is growing rather well at the moment. Its main hangar has lots of interesting aircraft in it, and the guides will show you around the workshop if you are interested (particularly if you are an interested small bear). In this picture you can see an English Electric Canberra and the framework of an Avro Anson. with a bit of the tail of a C-47 Dakota and an Jindivik target drone in the background.
I have had an email from somebody who wants to know why I always say "aeroplane" rather than "airplane" like they do on TV. Well, "aeroplane" is the correct name, it means "flys in the air". "Airplane" is an American mangling of the correct word. An "airplane" is a pneumatically-powered tool for smoothing wood (I had to check that big word up in a dictionary), not something that I would like to try flying in. So it is "aeroplane" or "aircraft" as far as this small Aussie bear is concerned, regardless of what American TV calls them.
Nit-picking aside, do visit the Port Adelaide area if you are ever across that way. Any place with maritime, aviation, railway and military vehicle museums all within a couple of blocks of one another is well worth the trip.

Labels: Adelaide, aircraft, South Australia

I really do want one. This is a replica Fokker Dr.1 and is painted just like the Red Baron's triplane. Dad and I have built four Dr.1s in various markings, but only in 1/72 scale, nothing like the size of this one. I found it in the South Australian Aviation Museum at Port Adelaide. I noticed a crazy dog hanging onto one of the cabane struts, so naturally I had to climb up for a chat (you can see me struggling up the slippery yellow frame if you look hard). Turns out the dog was actually a clone of the famous Snoopy! We had a great time but he wouldn't let me take the aeroplane away so it is up to Dad to get one for me.

Labels: Adelaide, aircraft, climbing, South Australia