I created this website in 2013 to record a trip that I made around Australia. When I finished it I got a bit slack and didn't add new content. However I did use the site to explore different web based technologies, it has variously been rewritten as plain HTML, python CGI, Mithril, Angular, ASP.NET, PHP & htmx. Currently it is a mixture of htmx and PHP. Anyway I am going to to start adding new content at some stage or maybe I won't.
The town of Balaklava (population 2048, postcode 5461) is located in South Australia, 92 kilometres north of Adelaide in the Mid North region. It is on the south bank of the Wakefield River, 25 kilometres (16 miles) east of Port Wakefield. It is named after the Battle of Balaklava that took place during the Crimean War, the battle being most famous for the Charge of the Light Brigade.
So, Sunday 5th August saw the annual playing of the Balaklava Open. Some of the chaps from my golf club were going and they reckoned a good day was to be had and that I should go. A 6:00 am start from Adelaide saw me at the Balaklava Golf Club about 7:30 for a 8:00 am hit off. Apart from the gale warning, threatened rain, hail and low single figure temperature it promised to be a great day.
My first drive went straight down the middle and I managed to make par, at the second I missed a short putt for birdie but made par. That folks were the highlights of the day, the next 25 holes were challenging. The wind was unbelievable, hitting into it required an extra two or three clubs, plus all the usual nonsense of the wind catching slices and hooks and carrying them into the scrub etc.
The members of the Balaklava club were very friendly, the golf course was in great nick, the food was great and I had a fantastic day. If you are in the area when the open is on, or you just want to play golf, I recommend you give it a go.
I don't know who won what, oh and the photo was taken on another day when the weather was clement.
Day 313 - Mildura. 48,000 kilometres or there abouts of driving around Australia and I have been breath tested three times, seems pretty reasonable doesn't it. If I told you that all three tests happened in the same town it doesn't seem that reasonable, two of them occurred at the exact same place. I would love to work out the probability of this happening, I won't, but I suspect that it would be remote if breath tests were truly random. All of the tests happened in the Sunraysia area, I'm guessing its not a good place to live if you drink and drive.
The city and country are very different places and I can give you a couple of examples of the difference. Firstly my neice works in the shop front for a large insurance company in a country town, when I walked past the other day they had no customers so I went in for a half hour chat, no customers came in so it was fine. Secondly, my car is filthy it hasn't had a wash for a long, long time, I wasn't too fussed, but my brother in law said one of the car wash places owed him a favour for something he had done for them. Lucky me, I got a free car wash and the car is clean, even the dead insects that had been baked onto the front of th car are gone, unbelievable.
Played golf at the Midlura Golf Resort with my sister, it was club 99 for the trip but the 100th course (at one club I played both of their courses). One of the reasons we played there is because they have remodelled the course to allow for an on course housing development (heaven help them) and we wanted to check out the new holes. Leaving the 15th I said to my sister I am going well and with the easy par 5 to come I should have a good score. She said there is no par 5 to come, I said there must be, otherwise the back nine would would be par 35 not par 36 as the card said. When things like this happen I immediatly think "fuck up" and sure enough the card is wrong, the back 9 is a par 35 but the card says par 36 and that the course is a par 72 when in fact it is par 71. See Mildura Resort Score Card.
