Tuesday 17th and Wednesday 18th 2012

After we crossed the border we went on to a small town called Tantanoola where we stopped for lunch thinking it was a pleasant place for a break and then we decided to stay the night and have a relaxing afternoon when I was able to complete one block of my Baby Jane quilt and Ian finally started to catch up on his reading. Every year he says he will read when we get home and has a great stack of books ready but other things happen and the books lie idle until we travel again and we forget to turn the TV on and instead enjoy music and sewing for me and reading for Ian.

However Tantanoola was an intriguing place which you wouldn’t glance at twice until you sit and look around. For example there is the famous Tantanoola Tiger. There was an enormous dog and we do mean enormous dog nearly 100 years ago which travelled around the district having as many jumbucks as he wanted. According to the newspaper cutting in the dining room, he ended up with the local constabulary from Mount Gambier ‘on his tail’. Finally they brought him down and a taxidermist did his work and he is now interred in the Tantanoola pub dining room where we had a cooling ale in order to learn of the story of the Tantanoola Tiger. So this was not an idle drinking night ---- pure research!

There is also a plaque to remember some servicemen who crashed nearby in WW2 after running out of fuel on a mission to look for a submarine that had been reported nearby. Very sad, as the pilot killed was only 27.

The first attraction for me to Tantanoola was the old railway station and building which certainly added charm. It is quite a busy street as it is only ten minutes from Millicent which has a large Bowater Scott factory there and close enough to commute to Mount Gambier.

They also have a ripper footy team who were premiers in their league in 2006 – more knowledge gleaned from the pub, great fonts of information. We heard the fellas training in the evening as the surrounds are very quiet and they certainly employed some forthright language to encourage each other for the next match!

On Wednesday we set off to Millicent, Kingston SE and had lunch at Salt Creek. Then to Meningie, Tailem Bend and tonight a park at Murray Bridge for our first night with power.