Carrickalinga is the exception to the Fleurieu Peninsula’s unspoiled beauty | Peter Goers
I don’t like McLaren Vale but at least it’s more interesting than Burnside-on-Sea, writes Peter Goers. Do you agree? Vote in our poll.
Opinion
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It’s better to Yankalilla than it is to Taperoo.
Yankalilla, Normanville, Second Valley and Rapid Bay are beautiful, unspoiled towns on the Fleurieu Peninsula with rolling hills, sea, farms which sustain us all, lots of charm and nice shops. Carrickalinga is an exception to this and more on Burnside-On-Sea, later.
The 10km of bloody roadworks around Aldinga are vexing but we’ll get a much-needed dual highway there with a bridge across it for easier access to McLaren Vale. Don’t ask me why.
Is McLaren Vale Australia’s most boring town and over-rated area? Willunga is nice.
Actually, Carrickalinga is even more boring than McLaren Vale but it ain’t a town.
It’s a place. Is Carrickalinga an old Aboriginal word for “three-storey beach houses”?
Carrikalinga is not just for rich people so I apologise to the poor people of “Carrick” – both of them.
Carrikalinga exists in three (awful) parts; deluxe houses with sea views sometimes blocked by sand dunes, lots of houses in a suburban dell with views of other houses, and nob hill with enormous mansions with a view of lots of everyone else’s houses and the distant sea.
Not only does Carrikalinga have no shops or facilities but the residents resolutely oppose same.
What a pity.
I’d love to announce a shopping mall with a Cheap As Chips, Booze Brothers, a pawnbroker, a hydroponic store, a car yard, a dirt bike track, a Housing Trust estate and a drug and alcohol rehab centre. Really, “Carrick” is the perfect place for the Super Duper Vroom Vroom Car Race and Womadelaide.
I visited this bailiwick for the excellent and progressive District Council of Yankalilla’s Australia Day celebrations, which were perfect. Aboriginal people were well acknowledged as were all the many wonderful volunteers in that vigorous community and new citizens were welcomed heartily.
I stayed in the Big 4 caravan and cabin park and loved seeing so many happy families surrounded by the detritus of a family beach holiday – bikes, Boogie boards, barbecues and friends of the kids’.
Dads and mums seemed rejuvenated but full of that end-of-holiday feeling of dread at the thought of packing up and going home to the realities of work, school and real life.
A dilapidated kiosk and cafe on the Normanville foreshore has been happily replaced by a superb, airy modern building replete with kiosk, bistro, surf lifesavers and Aqua Blue – surely the best new restaurant in SA. I had the surf ’n’ turf and a parfait which were perfect. I was tempted to have crispy leafy sea dragon as an entree. I’m joking.
Yankalilla has a great bakery (and so does Myponga), a lovely community art gallery and two of SA’s best op shops. At one, I bought a cashmere and worsted suit for $1. That shop is too cheap. I’d gladly have paid $2.
Stay just a litter bit longer
This is very sad and sadly inevitable. Two years ago I was given 37 boxes of theatre and drama books which no library, university or school wanted. They have been a pain to store and move. Finally, I was able to create a useful library at Holden Street Theatres but that left 20 boxes of very obscure books and outdated periodicals to be discarded.
As someone who has loved and collected books all my life, it pains me to say the only alternative was to let those books be pulped and turned into kitty litter. Better that than landfill.
All things must pass. We do. And so, sadly, do books. At least those books will serve a good purpose for cats and their owners and they have made money for Rotary which offers this service. But, like the cats, I feel like shit.
Peter Goers’ What’s hot/what’s not
WHAT’S HOT
THE leather shop in Yankalilla
ABC TV series on the previous three Coalition PMs, Nemesis.
WHY can’t China fund PNG? Someone has to.
WHAT’S NOT
HOW do people afford elite private schools?
GODFREY’S going.
I’M a bit over Taylor Swift.
RICH people booing the PM at the tennis.
WHAT has Donald Trump ever done for anyone?
CHITA Rivera, who gave me the greatest experience in our Cabaret Festival.
Penbo: Jew-hating halfwits have just taken their masks off
If you think you’re progressive holding up a Hezbollah flag, you need to go back to left-winger school and brush up on the tenets of socialism, writes David Penberthy.
Why Menendez brothers’ murder case is tormenting me
Are the Menendez brothers, who admitted to brutally murdering their wealthy parents in the family’s Beverly Hills mansion, victims or psychopaths? Julie Cross argues the jury is still out.