Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: New South Wales

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 10 (Breweries)

    Longtime readers probably guessed that eventually I’d talk about beer and breweries that I found during the trip. I’m so predictable. Naturally I focused some research on this topic ahead of time so I’d be prepared. I did find one surprise, though. It turned out that beer trends in the United States seemed to cross…

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 9 (Epic Runs)

    All those large restaurant meals began to take a toll on my waistline even with our busy touring schedule. I hadn’t come close to my normal fitness regimen even with frequent walks and hikes to various sites. I was on vacation and I supposed that should be expected. Still, I needed to get out and…

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 8 (Captive Animal Encounters)

    The previous article discussed our several encounters with wild animals in their native habitats. However, we saw even more in captivity. My older son collects zoos like I collect breweries. He makes sure that he saves a map from each one as a souvenir too (wonder where he inherited that quirk from?). No matter where…

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 7 (Wild Animal Encounters)

    Certainly the wildlife we experienced differed from what we’d typically seen before. Australia and New Zealand, so far removed from the rest of the world for so long, featured all sorts of famously unique creatures. I don’t need to elaborate. We’re all familiar with them. I simply enjoyed the opportunity to experience them in their…

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 6 (The Hunter Region)

    I dropped a hint in one of the earlier articles that our plans went awry only once. That happened in Australia. Upon landing in Sydney, we headed immediately about three hours north by automobile along the coast into the Hunter Region. The Hunter Valley formed the most well-known portion of the region, acclaimed for its…

  • It’s a Mystery to Me

    I felt like a good mystery. People named a number of geographic features Mystery something-or-another. However, most of them seemed to be Mystery Lake for some mysterious reason. Generally I couldn’t find much because they were often small, existed in abundance and fell across many different English speaking countries. I discarded them. Instead I found…

  • Boring, Dull and Bland

    Boring, Dull and Bland hopefully doesn’t describe Twelve Mile Circle or my social life although maybe observers would disagree. It referenced a unique relationship between three very special communities. One day a Scottish bicyclist took a scenic ride through Clackamas County, Oregon, just outside of Portland. Then she passed through the unincorporated community of Boring.…

  • Odds and Ends 13

    Twelve Mile Circle occasionally features topics that don’t warrant an entire article. I collect these items in a spreadsheet and present them all together every once in awhile. However I hadn’t done one of those in awhile and the topics began to pile-up on my list. Odds and Ends 12 appeared all the way back…

  • Gibraltaresque

    I didn’t intend to feature Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula. I talked about that one before. For example, a major road crossed its airport runway. Fun stuff! One other little tidbit interested me too, its etymology. Gibraltar came from the name of an Arab or Berber military…

  • An Arm and a Leg

    I stumbled upon Joe Batt’s Arm again. I first became acquainted with Joe Batt and his arm when Twelve Mile Circle investigated Mundane First Name Places about a year ago. The settlement grew along an inlet, colloquially called an arm, that formed a part of its name. It still amused me all these months later…