Bart Bear's Blog

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

This sharp rock marks the evacuation point in the tiny railway town of Cook, on the trans-Australian line. I tried to climb right up to the point of the rock, but it is too pointy for me to balance on. We stopped at Cook for a short break while our Indian-Pacific train was being topped up with fuel and water. I'm not sure why Cook needs an evacuation point. There are only 5 people living there now. There is a shop that opens when the train comes through, a hospital which is now closed except when the flying doctor is called in, an airstrip, and not much else. Still, if they ever need to evacuate everyone can easily see where to go first. A thought; maybe this isn't just a rock, maybe it's a Star Trek style matter-transmitter. If so, it didn't work while I was on the platform.

Labels: South Australia, train

I love this country of ours. It really is a land of contrasts and there is always something interesting to see no matter where you travel. One of the trips that I enjoyed most was our trip across the continent from Sydney to Perf on the Indian-Pacific train (note from Dad: Bart just will not call the place Perth). The changing landscapes out the train window were amazing; the cliffs and valleys of the Blue Mountains, the plains of New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia, the mining towns of Broken Hill, Kalgoorlie and small places that were just a pithead and a mullock heap, and of course the oceans at both ends. Here's a couple of pictures that show one big contrast. The top one is the deserted remains of one of the little railway towns on the Nullarbor Plain. I think it may be Forrest as there are some trees near a house in the background. All that's left are the foundations of the goods sheds, the loading ramp, and the old telegraph line. Nothing for hundreds of miles around but flat, treeless plain and saltbush and sand. The only people are occasional railway repair gangs. The bottom picture is one of the bays at Rottnest Island, in the Indian Ocean near Perf. There are not many buildings near this bay but there are lots and lots of boats, and lots of people as well. People from Perf come over in their boats and anchor in the bays around Rottnest for the weekend, or in some cases for the whole summer. They spend their time swimming, snorkelling, fishing and partying. Desert and sea are both great places for small bears to visit.

Labels: boats, South Australia, train, Western Australia

This year we have been to two very different places, as you can see from these photos. Back in March we travelled through the desert on the Indian-Pacific train and we are just back from Hamilton Is where we spent a lot of time going places on boats. The desert part of the train trip was the Nullarbor Plain, not a sandy desert like the Oldies saw in Egypt and Dubai, but an area where not enough rain falls to grow much in the way of plants. Its just loads of sand and saltbush and not much else. But it is a fascinating place and I hope we go back into the Australian desert sometime and roam around in it for a while. I really want to see what the animals that live there are like, even though Dad says lots of them are dangerous. The sea is very different of course. It changes all the time and is full of critters and islands and has nice sandy beaches along lots of the edge. I know a fair bit now about the things that live in and near the sea. I am not sure what is the most impressive, the desert or the sea. Some people absolutely love the one and hate the other, but this small bear just loves both of them and want to see and learn more about them.

Labels: boats, Hamilton Is, Queensland, South Australia, train, Western Australia

These trees zipping past the window of our cabin on the Indian-Pacific are actually nearly all of the trees you see on your way across the Nullarbor Plain. They are at what remains of the tiny town of Forrest, half way across the flat, dry, treeless Nullarbor. They were planted to give a bit of shade to the town back in the days when Forrest was a vital stop on the Trans-Australian Railway and on the air route from Perf to Adelaide. There are only a few houses left there now and the only people living there are two guys that look after the airfield and occasional railway maintenance crews. The airfield is still important as it is the only one on the Nullarbor that can take big jets. Scruffy and I really liked our trip across the Nullarbor. It is a very different place to where we live, and there is not much like it anywhere else in the world. You learn all sorts of things when you travel. Everybody should do it.

Labels: South Australia, train, trees, Western Australia

This just may be the highest spot on the Nullarbor plain. It is a pile of big rocks in the centre of Cook, the railway town on the trans-Australia line. Scruffy and I found it when the Indian-Pacific stopped here for a while on the way to Perf. All the country you can see around Cook, for hundreds of miles actually, is absolutely flat, so I figure that climbing this rockpile puts us in the same class as Hillary and Tenzing, conquerors of the highest peak. The big bare sandy area around the rockpile is one of the main streets of Cook. It runs from the aerodrome to the hospital and when the hospital was in use the Flying Doctor could taxi his aeroplane right up to the hospital door. Although my rockpile is the highest peak, you can't actually see much from it. Some of the only trees in the whole of the Nullarbor have been planted around it. Anyhow, lizards, snakes and small bears all appreciate it because they can sit up there quietly and soak up sun while the rest of the trainload of tourists run around madly taking pictures.

Labels: climbing, Perth, South Australia, train

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

One of the places our Indian-Pacific train went through is this one in the Nullarbor called Watson. Like most of the old railway towns it has almost completely disappeared. There is only nameplate, a siding, a level crossing and a few roads left to show that there was once a town here. Life in those towns must have been hard for families as there is nothing much to do or see on the Nullarbor unless you are into semi-desert critters and plants. You would have to go holiday just to see a tree or a hill. Now I live in Watson in Canberra and it doesn't look much like this Watson. We have trees and hills and shops and everything a small bear needs. The old towns on the trans-Australia line were named after Australian Prime Ministers and so are the Canberra suburbs, so that's why there are two places (at least) called Watson.

Labels: South Australia, train

The most interesting part of our trip on the Indian-Pacific was the section where we went across the Nullarbor Plain. "Nullarbor" means "no trees" in Latin, and that's exactly what it looks like. Its a huge ancient sea bottom, absolutely flat and almost no trees to be seen. Most of the trees you do see are where people planted them back in the last century when there were a lot of small railway towns along the trans-Australia line. The Nullarbor is huge, 270,000 square kilometers in area. It runs almost 2000 km from Ceduna in South Australia to Norseman in Western Australia, and from the Great Australian Bight for hundreds of kilometers inland to the deserts in the centre of Australia. I never saw anything like it before and was at the window for the whole day.

Labels: South Australia, train, Western Australia

These old sheds are the gaol at Cook, out in the middle of the Nullarbor. They are not very big, but there weren't many people in Cook even when it was one of the important stations on the Trans-Australian railway, so there weren't many prisoners. Now it is still an important stop for the Indian-Pacific but the trains are much better now and only 4 people live there. The gaols aren't used now. I wondered what it would be like to be locked up in a small corrugated iron shed in 40 degree temperatures. Of course Dad was keen to help, sometimes I think he is bit too keen to put me into places like this. Well, it's not nice in there and I bet the prisoners were very happy to hear the train coming to haul them away to gaol in Adelaide. At least I was able to get out fairly easily. I bet no other "prisoner" has ever managed to climb up the back of the door and out through the little window hole. Can you see me making my escape? I enjoyed the adventure, Mum was not amused and Dad had the riot act read to him.

Labels: South Australia, train, trouble

This is what most of Australia looks like when you get away from the areas where most people live. Most of the country is semi-desert like this bit near Broken Hill. The soil is sandy and very red. The trees are low and scrubby. Most of the animals only come out at night and spend the days in burrows or whatever shade they can find. The only animals you might see in daytime from the Indian-Pacific are camels. Camels haven't been in Australia for long. They were bought to Australia back in the late 19th century to carry stuff across country like this to outback towns and stations. They were turned loose when trains and trucks took over and now their decendents live in the "red centre". We went through country like this all the way from central New South Wales across to the start of the Nullarbor in South Australia, and again during the last day in the south-western part of Western Australia. Scruffy tried to count trees but I tried counting animals. I had it easy because we only saw a few rabbits and some birds, not a single camel.

Labels: South Australia, train, Western Australia

Here's some pictures of our locomotive (that's an Oldies' word for train engine). Our engine was the biggest one I have ever climbed on. It is an NR class diesel-electric, one of 120 built in Australia in the late 1990s. This is some tough loco. It weighs 132 tonnes and is powerful enough to haul just on 1,000 tonnes. Our train wasn't that heavy. We had 16 passenger carriages and two car-carrier carriages and these weighed just over 700 tonnes. At times the engine could haul us at 100 km/hr, especially on the long straight stretch across the Nullarbor. The pictures were taken at a place called Cook, which is in South Australia, just about half-way across Australia. Cook used to be a busy town back in the days of steam engines, but now only a few people live there to refuel and water the trains. We had a stop there while our train was serviced. Scruff and I made friends with the drivers and we spent some time in the drivers cabin learning how to drive the train. It is a lot simpler than the steam engines I had a go at on other trips. See the bears in the window? Unka Mark, eat your heart out.

Labels: South Australia, train, trips

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

How embarrassing! This thing looked like it was put there just for small bears to climb on, but it turned out to be a trap. It is actually meant to be a sculpture thingy, full of meaning and artistic merit. It is in the main parking area at the Blue Lake in Mount Gambier. You can read more about the lake in some of my earlier postings. Anyhow, while the oldies and Scruffy were reading the signs at the lookout, I climbed up the sculpture. It has this interesting hole in the centre that goes right through the rock. I thought it would be great to climb through the hole and up the other side. Half-way through I got stuck. "No problems", I think, "I will just turn around and go back out". There were problems. I got well and truly wedged in the hole. The oldies and Scruff were no real help, they were too busy laughing their heads off. Dad got me unstuck by pushing my posterior with a thin log. He seemed to think that was funny. Some days not even a small bear can win.

Labels: climbing, Great Ocean Road, South Australia, trouble

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

Wind can be useful, as well as being dangerous to sailing ships. On our Great Ocean Road trip we saw two windfarms. They are both on ridges near the coast where the wind from the Roaring Forties hits Victoria and South Australia. This one is at Codrington in Victoria. The other one is near Lake Bonney in South Australia. You can drive right through the Lake Bonney one, but at Codrington you have to be in a tour group. The oldies were very excited by these places. They have often argued that wind power should be used more in Australia. The old arguments that wind turbines make too much noise and are dangerous to birds don't make sense to this small bear. Even standing just about right under a turbine all you hear is a very quiet swoosh. And we saw a flock of crows fly right through a spinning turbine without injury to the crows or the turbine. I guess people think the turbine blades spin fast like aeroplane propellors, but they actually spin quite slowly, even in strong winds. The Codrington windfarm is Mum's favorite. Can you guess why? That's right. Cows. Sometimes I worry about her.

Remember, to see a bigger picture just click on this one. Check my archives out too, to see what I have been doing over the last year.

Labels: engineering, Great Ocean Road, South Australia, trips, windfarm

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