Tidy Towns

The cleanliness of the South Australian towns we've experienced so far will of course be in part a result of civic pride and we are guessing the particular ethics of Scottish, Welsh and German forebears but could also be a spin-off from South Australian re-cycling policy. All other states should take note! The sky is not going to fall in if shoppers are asked to pay for a shopping bag or if there is a surcharge on bottles and cans. The fact is, here you don't find plastic bags on road sides or other random places. One adapts to taking ones own bags very rapidly in lieu of paying 15c per sturdy reusable bag available at the checkout. If some thoughtless person does toss a can or bottle to the ground it won't remain there for long since it represents a 5-10cent return value. We suspect that the policy has a winder spin-off that keeps litter and recycling 'front of mind' too.

The 'Bottles and Can only' bins are evident everywhere and the money recouped is retained by the locality from which it was collected. These funds are then channeled to various civic projects. In Port Vincent, the annual collection can be as much as $20,000 and this has funded street landscaping, walking trail maintenance an so on. It's hard to present a downside to the policy unless you can provide a compelling reason for an individual's human right to trash their surrounds.

The Bloke treated me to another surprise and suggested completing the last of the local walking trails which took us south behind the caravan park and in the direction of Stansbury. THANK YOU to all the rubbish collecting that made this such a joy!

 Community involvement

 The poor Bloke, he reckons he's up for another walking 'trial'.

Watch out!

It's quite a drop down.