The Australian gem is the coastline and the edges where oceans meets sandstone cliffs.

One of the curiosities of modern travel is how people cluster around electrical outlets with the dim and dying batteries of their laptops.

Hi Gary,

What a wonderful image.
I love those "serious" types with the arsenal of lenses, most likely taking shots for calendar...or usually round here, for a real estate ad.

I think you could make an excellent commentry on "Non-places" a la Marc Auge, and your progressing through them, behaving "predictably", or not! Your images would be very interesting.

It is nice to catch up with your writings, I have been nose to the grindstone and now shall apply myself to the pleasant task of reading my way through this site.
Great stuff as per.

John Coltrane played in a taxi? Makes a difference to the Bob Francis talkback that I normally get after arriving in Adelaide.

Cam, I sure did.

We had power at the Lighthouse cottages at Cape de Couedic but the single line across the island kept flickering all the time. S owe had surge problems. I would work on battery power to download the images from the camera then recharge late evening.

Fiona,
I do not know Marc Auge--care to enlighten me? I've dug around on Google and presumably you mean the Marc Auge of Non Places – Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity?

Does that mean that if place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity is a non-place?

If non-places have no identity, no history and no urban relationships, then they are temporary spaces for passage, communication and consumption; the motorways seen from car interiors, motorway restaurants/service/petrol stations, large supermarkets, duty-free shops and the passenger transit lounges of world airports.

Non-places are contrary to places. They represent the decline of the public man and the rise of the self-obsessed man. Non-places are such due to their solitary arrangement, shielded by pin and credit-card numbers, as well as passwords that create safety as well as solitude and alienation.Thus:

The airport is a distinctive non-place of travel. It is just a provisional space on the worldwide network of air travel. There is no history in the airport’s commercial identity at all. The memory in the airport lounges go back merely to the previous 24 hours of flight arrivals and departures, sometimes even less, depending on the frequencies of the flight and the availability of free airport runway slots. The car parks, access infrastructure and subways, which often surround large world airports, are all non-places too.

Non places have no discernable histories or identities; they are merely interchangeable and often temporary transit points for travel, consumption and communicative exchange.

Michael,
I've been sparred the bigoted rants of Bob Francis when I've arrived in Adelaide in the morning.

Listening to John Coltrane taking the edge off things is much better than listening to the racing radio or a Liberal taxi Driver going on about the Rann ALP ruining us all.

Yes, that is the one I was referring to. Seems you have the measure of his ideas., as I understand them. I like to consider large shopping malls within the equation, as well as places of transit.
I am interested in the way our attachment to place, and our remebering of places, relates to memeory and how we create images of our memories.

I am really loving todays post. I am racing off to look up the quote. It is, as they say, relevant to my interests..