I'm "on the road" for the next 2 1/2 weeks, away from home in Darwin, the largest town and capital of the Northern Territory of Australia.

A motel room will be home; restaurants and clubs will be my dining experience; weight-control will be my cross to bear.

I'll have a bunch of mostly complete strangers as my collaborators, and I'll manage the lot and fall or rise on the outcome. Success will be measured in small, daily doses.

There is no direct flight from my home city, Canberra, to Darwin. This time about 2 years ago I was making regular trips to Adelaide (capital of South Australia) for work. Today, I stage through it again.

South Australia and the Northern Territory are the two "states" making up the middle of the Australian continent. One day I will discover which mental genius decided that the zone time used here would be 30 minutes behind the eastern states (rather than a more logical 60 minutes). I recently speculated, when I was in Darwin for the final liaison visit, that it had been a Government Surveyor of South Australia (in the 1800s, pre the Federation of Australia as a nation, who advised the then Governor who would have proclaimed it): Someone who knows geography, uses star sights, etc, and is credible. But, someone who did not have any inkling that few people outside SA and NT could make the mental gymnastics to convert the zone times in an age of rapid communications. It didn't matter if you were travelling overland, or by ship, in the 1800s or even the early 1900s. For that matter, few travelled here. Neither SA nor NT were on the tourist map.

Truly, their roads were less travelled.
_____
Peter