Get your trunks on, ladies and gentlemen and your portmanteaux packed...It's time to hit the trail to Oz!
The following message has just arrived from Ian, along with these samples of the sort of thing you can expect when you leave your winter wardrobe behind and head for an Australian Christmas..!

Hi Everyone (John can you forward this to Ruth & others?)

Caroline & I live in South Australia, albeit 100's of kms apart (I live in Adelaide and Caroline lives in Coffin Bay -named after an erudite English noble not after a black box). If you get out your maps you will see that Adelaide is the Capital City of South Australia and is located about 720 kms from Melbourne by road or 50 minutes by air.

To get a flight into Adelaide from the UK (real good deals on offer now!) you can choose from Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Garuda or Cathay Pacific. Each offer stopovers or straight through flights. Qantas and Singapore Airlines stop over in Singapore, Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, Garuda in Denpasar and Cathay in Hong Kong.

So you arrive in Adelaide in December at the start of our summer - what do you do?

First thaw out in our Mediterranean climate, visit some of the 150+ wineries for free tastings within 1/12 hrs drive from the City, enjoy the beach & restaurants (highest restaurant to people ratio in Australia), visit the Lovells - enjoy an Aussie BBQ, do side trips etc. Then on to "paradise" first by car (7 hrs) or by air (50 minutes) to:
Port Lincoln, home of the world's largest Southern Bluefin Tuna Fleet, great big Southern lobsters, abalone, prawns, kingfish, the famous King George Whiting and then:

On to Coffin Bay (1 hr by car) to delight in its Oysters, scenery, seals, never ending beaches and natural wilderness.

Just think, you could do all this guided by two "Old" (sic) Bedalians gone native who can make all the arrangements culminating in an OB reunion in Coffin Bay in late December.

Suggest you visit this website: http://www.southaustralia.com/entity.asp?entity_id=4480 and browse.

So that Caroline can reserve her "Palace" at Coffin Bay, can you let her and me know who might be coming and what further info you need? As South Australia was established by free settlers, not convicts, you can travel to SA without wearing chains.

Interested in fishing? Look at the pictures above and compare them to the Office photo - where would you rather be?.

Look forward to hearing from you all.

Love & Regards

Ian (Click his name for Email Link)