Re: SER1 Ah, Cooma !

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    G'Day Anthony,
    It is often a bit of a problem for visitors here finding names on a 
map and expecting there to be something acually there. I am sure that 
the map publishers like to fill in a few of the blank spaces so that 
their maps look a bit busier.
    There is a village up in the mountains near here called Wee Jasper, 
its sort of half way between Yass and Tumut (you may have been to the 
latter if you travelled further west of Kiandra). Wee Jasper has a store 
which is the post office, pub, garage (by which I mean it sells petrol) 
and take away. There is also a church and a one teacher school.
    A couple of years back, I met a German or Austrian tourist there 
with a rental car with one of those skinny 50 Km/h rated spare wheels 
fitted. He was looking for Wee Jasper and I told him he was in it. He 
then asked the whereabouts of the shops and garage so that he could get 
his tyre fixed. I pointed out the shop/post office/pub/garage and he 
would not have it that that was all that there, as the town was shown on 
his map. The "garage" definitely does not do any repairs.
    When the realisation finally dawned that he was faced with an 80+ 
Km. drive in either direction on very ordinary, hilly and windy  gravel 
roads to get his tyre fixed, the look he gave me was as if he had just 
been dropped off in the middle of the Simpson Desert and that his very 
survival was at stake.
    Kiandra was a gold rush town in the latter part of the 19th century. 
It is also notable as having recored the lowest minimum temperatures in 
Australia when records were kept there. Large numbers of miners died 
there due to the cold in winter. It is also where down hill skiing as a 
sport/recreation was invented.
    Cheers
    Allan
    Canberra (not very far from Kiandra as the crow flies), Australia



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