Tag: Australia

  • Welcome

    Welcome. It sounds so welcoming when used as a town name, as if the town founders and developers genuinely wanted visitors and residents alike to enjoy their time there. It sets a nice tone and a pleasant expectation. Settlements named Welcome exist in a number of areas. I’m actually a little surprised there aren’t a…

  • Highest Lowpoints

    There’s a tendency to wonder about the highest point of land as one examines an area from afar. People make quite a hobby out of of collecting visits to those highpoints even for remarkably small subunits. I’ve been know to do that myself and I’ve featured the results of my efforts on these very pages.…

  • Over the Road

    An image posted by reader Katy in a comment on my recent Tunnels, Bridges, Lifts and Inclines article completely captivated me. It shows a canal going over a road in the Netherlands. The interesting aspect, to me, is that a viewer can determine the actual depth of the canal. Highway engineers were kind enough to…

  • Australia’s Longest Straight Line?

    Lines continue to fascinate me, both imaginary and real. I found myself pondering the website of Australian Rail Maps, looking at their Western Australia page. I’d heard about a specific segment crossing the hauntingly desolate Nullarbor Plain and I intended to investigate it further. It’s here, between kilometre 797 west of Ooldea (South Australia) and…

  • My Travel Box

    It struck me that I’d gone really north and really west when I went to Alaska, perhaps the farthest I’d ever been in either direction. That made me wonder about the most extreme latitudes (north/south) and longitudes (east/west) I’d visited during my lifetime. I was wrong on both counts by the way; Alaska was neither…

  • A Couple of Recent Bloggy Finds

    I’ve been getting a few reader referrals over the last couple of days from a blog I’d never seen before. It had a rather intriguing and promising Intertube domain, railmaps.blogspot.com. Naturally I wanted to check it out. The site was kind enough to recommend me to its readers and I hoped to repay the favor.…

  • “Ya gotta be jokin’ – No we’re not!”

    “Ya gotta be jokin’ – No we’re not!” proclaims the Lake Eyre Yacht Club, the self-determined Worlds most exclusive Yacht Club, where only people who have actually skippered their own vessel on the lake surface can attain full membership. This becomes an extremely daunting task under the best of conditions. Additionally, conditions only allow it…

  • Australia’s Shortest Internal Border

    What is the shortest border in Australia between any state or territory? Take a look at the map and see if you can figure it out. You won’t, but try anyway. Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales? If I were forced to guess quickly I’d probably say that a likely choice would be the…

  • Ferries of Australia

    If I’m featuring another set of ferries then it must mean I’ve completed another national ferry page. Yes, indeed that’s the case. Today I introduce my new Ferries of Australia map (and detailed maps for Sydney and Brisbane). With that, I’ll highlight some of the more interesting routes I’ve uncovered. I hope you have an…

  • Australia’s Weird Little Time Zone

    Continental Australia is divided into three standard time zones, Western, Central and Eastern. It’s pretty simple to understand even bearing in mind that Australian Central Standard Time aligns with the half-hour (UTC+9:30). Individual Australian states and territories determine whether to recognise Daylight Saving Time (DST) or not. Far-flung Australian island territories and its Antarctic stations…