Friday, December 6, 2013

OTBR: The Edge of Australia's Corio Bay

Latitude: S 38° 09.612
Longitude: E 144° 31.590

A child on a road trip with his family asks, "Where are we?" and the father answers, "Let's check the map. We're off the blue roads [the Interstate Highways marked in blue on the road atlas]. We're off the red roads [the US and state highways]. We're off the black roads [the county highways]. I think we're off the map altogether." It was always my dream to be off the map altogether.

After the jump, a few of the random places (and I mean random literally) that I visited vicariously last month that are "off the blue roads".



  • down a very rough dirt road containing water-filled potholes leading to the edge of Australia's Corio Bay ("a great view of jet skiers and fishermen in small motor boats")
  • behind a large wooden doorway just round the corner from the "Weiße Burg" (white castle) in Sechtem, Germany
  • in the historic gold-mining town of Maldon, Victoria, Australia, near a Diggings Heritage Area with a Goldfields Steam Railway in full swing
  • in Manassas Battlefield National Park in Virginia, down a dirt road close to where Bull Run flows under Sudley Road, and across that road from Featherbed Lane
  • in an unfenced green pasture next to sorghum fields near the famous old cattle drive town of Dodge City, Kansas
  • in a beautifully green paddock of grass cows to enjoy on a dairy farm on the North Island of New Zealand
  • in an unfenced unharvested corn field in Nebraska
  • in a plowed farm field in Illinois, surrounded by plowed farm fields all ready for winter, only a few farm houses and a wind farm in the far distance visible
  • in a green field behind a fence in the Texas panhandle, a new extreme north for the state ("What can I say...it's flat and flat and flat out here")
  • in Ohio, near a drainage area overgrown with brush down a private road that used to be public until it was cut off the Interstate 70
  • on a dirt road in a very flat lonely part of New Mexico ("The main things to see are center pivot irrigators and feed processing plants at the feedlots.")
  • in a recently logged forest in New South Wales ("saw several large grey kangaroos, lots of black cows and a couple of rabbits")
  • in Utah, down an unnamed dirt road in sparse, dried grass and scattered bushes, just before a sandy dry wash
  • in typical scrub just off the beach near Wallabi Point, New South Wales
  • in a little cluster of trees just up a bank and over a fence from a quiet rural dirt road in New Zealand
  • in a wooded area, pine and birch, down a one lane road of natural sand and rock, south of Lake Lawrence, Minnesota
  • in an "immaculately kept" trailer park in Tennessee
  • near an old chicken coop in the back yard of bright yellow house in Illinois
  • near a low stone wall, behind a closed iron gate that blocks access to the steep driveway leading up to a multi-million dollar home in Burlingame, California
  • on the far northern outskirts of Melbourne, surrounded by empty green fields waiting to be developed into residential housing estates ("available from AU$260,000 if anyone is interested.")
  • and northeast of Heathcoate, Victoria, in an idyllic pastoral scene of softly sloping grassy fields, full dams, gum trees, the bleating of fat sheep and the incessant laughter of a pair of kookaburras

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