Not sure whether to include these photos in the "Foreign" directory or this one, but I figured since it was very much a first-hand hunting experience for me, I thought this would be the best place. This spring I decided to head to Australia for a few months to look for work/travel about. The job prospects wound up being a little more limited than I expected, but I did have a great time during my travels. It turns out a good friend of mine whom I had met north of the arctic circle while working here in Canada was also in Australia doing the same thing. We shared one of his relative's vacant apartment in Perth for a month and looked for work before deciding to buy an old used car and drive across the country - the more than 8000 km from Perth to Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane, and finally back to Sydney for the flight home. We spent from early February until late April on the road, living out of a 1996 Toyota Camry, and of course I took every opportunity to stop for glass. Turns out, Australia has lots of it.

In the front yard of a long-abandoned, long-vacant farm near Streaky Bay, SA we spotted a couple rickety, standing telephone poles. These were the type you find in the yards of the most frugal and innovative of farmers - using whatever they can salvage or have laying around. One pole had a couple standard, Japanese-made telegraph styles mounted horizontally on straight steel pins and we left those behind. This pole, however, had a couple nice MADE IN OCCUPIED JAPAN-marked telephone insulators mounted on J-brackets. Eric pushed the pole over with a minimum of effort and the pieces belonged to us!