Signs of the times.

It is with a little sadness that I must report we now have a very posh sign at our supermarket (the island has one). I no longer feel I belong to this exclusive club AKA 'locals' who actually know where it is. Sort of 'if you don't KNOW where it is (straight across the road from the pub, next to the petrol pumps) then you don't belong and should be obliged to live on a diet of dead sea-birds, saltbush and old Boags cans. It'll make a man of you and eventually you'll be fit to be let into our secret. Ah well. They've done a good job of signage, but it's, well, rather ordinary. Perhaps we can arrange for a few misleading pointers via Green Island, just so that strangers can appreciate the treasures wrested from the erratic belly of the ferry instead of just thinking we have supermarkets like everwhere else.

Knowing the top sekrit location of the Emita Hall (where the Cracker Night was held) is definitely a sign of being one of the local cognosenti. It hasn't lowered itself to any of these infra dig signs, and is suitably discretely hidden behind a screen of trees. And no... it isn't actually IN Emita. Well. Maybe by some definitions of 'in', or 'Emita'. The Emita church and Fire Station mark that well-know landmark 'the end of the tar road', and may possibly share the area with some feral peacocks, but not houses or a town or even village as such, no. That - which in my ignorance might be Emita (Google Earth says so) or possibly Port Davies or both or neither, is about two kilometres back. There is also a dirt road turn off inland just before the Fire Station. If you follow this road for a further two and half kilometers, past nary a sign of human habitation you will come that betraying feature...

A fork in the road!

And if you KNOW where to go, you will take neither of the two roads, but proceed down the track straight in front of you, rather obscured by trees, you'll be there in a hundred metres or so. It's really obvious (if you have lived here since birth) :-).

I can't wait to be able to smile friendlily (because almost everyone here will, and wave. Smile and wave, smile and wave. That really is the way it is here) at the lost tourists, and say "203 Palana Rd.? Now who lives there?" (and look suitably blank). "Ah, you mean Joe Smith's house? Now why didn't you say so? Well now, go back the way you came, turn left at the third brown cow, go on down there until you get power-pole number 4323, and then turn right onto the track. It's about two km down that just after the burned out stump..."