Hold My Hand, Miss Jane: Travels with Squiggle
Editor’s Note: If you miss Mr Squiggle as much as Jack clearly does, sign the petition to bring Mr Squiggle back!
For those of you born without eyes and ears and a television in Australia, or you just don’t know, Mr Squiggle was one of the longest-running children’s television programs on national (non-commercial) television in The Great Wide Brown Land.
He had a pencil for a nose and would use this to turn children’s “squiggles” (abstract doodles or drawings of nothing much really) into pictures that were often “upside down” (as the Black Board was fond of saying). The children’s squiggles were always on pink pieces of paper and the paper was always about A3. This would infer that adults may have been involved, but this is what is known in the business as a Red Herring. To get up to speed on the real facts watch this:
Travel the Mr Squiggle Way
How could any of this possibly be relevant to a travel blog? Well, Mr Squiggle was indeed a frequent flyer – he lived on the Moon, travelled by Rocket and was often taking “space walks”, especially in the middle of an episode, requiring him to always ask Miss Jane (his companion/co-host for the show) to “take my hand, Miss Jane, I’m going for a spacewalk”.
This would helpfully bring things back to Earth, avoiding the travel diversions that a spacewalk may bring, both for him and the show. We won’t go into the talking Steam-Shovel or the grumpy snail with a television on its back who also enjoyed creative freedom on this much loved children’s classic. Quite simply, Mr Squiggle rocked!
We could all learn quite a lot from Mr Squiggle – from holiday planning manoeuvres and trip ideas to places to go and things to be. Squiggles are probably best left for the notepad by the phone in the office or on that map on the wall and there are documented problems with noses and pencils (though probably like Mr Squiggle these are just stories). But for the discerning traveller there are no end of superlative destinations should you fancy a real space walk.
Moon on Earth: Coober Pedy
Coober Pedy, in South Australia, is the destination par excellence for the tripper on the go. It’s a squigglers delight with scarcely a straight line, person or road to be seen in this rambling desert oasis. Formerly home to 90% of the world’s opals (well they all got dug up and sold so it’s not their home anymore), Coober Pedy, like the Moon, can lay claim to an amazing diversity of people and wacky landscapes. There are over 50 nationalities that make up the population of 3,000 pillars of society and partly unstable people -some unbelievable percentage of them live in underground dugouts and the town is 700 kilometres from the next nearest nowhere. And one of the star ships from Star Wars is parked on the main street – fantastic you say!
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| A space ship from ‘Star Wars’ in Coober Pedy. No joke. |
If you want real facts about this place then read a book, but I can truthfully tell you that the this area used to be part of the old inland sea in southern Australia – the amazing Breakaways are testament to that: hills of coloured stone mystically arranged out in the middle of a great flat expanse. The road out to Oodnadatta is regarded as travelling through a “Moon Plain”, which for you terrestrial folk is a gibber desert (tiny rocks, no monkeys).
Moon on Earth: Queenstown
Queenstown, in Tasmania, was once the site of way too much forestry and general digging-up-of-stuffness, and it’s now also regarded as a moonscape. My favourite. The people there are also a little odd, as you would expect: the fella at the petrol station told me about someone driving off with the nozzle of the petrol bowser still sticking out of his car – nice little fountain of fuel that was.
With or without a petrochemical disaster there has been talk of planting trees back up in the hills and making it look more like the rest of the planet. The local authorities said “No, it attracts the tourists the way it is”. So be attracted, find a talking snail and head down to Tasmania now! While you’re down on the island’s west coast you’ll see and hear enough things to make you think you are on another planet to make your trip more than worthwhile. Don’t swim there, it’s bloody cold.
Moon on Earth: Winton
I have mentioned Winton before so won’t carry on about it again. It’s great. It’s searing hot in summer. It’s easy to find a car-park all year round, which you can’t say about the Moon. And Nick Cave wrote a movie about it (The Proposition), which like the Moon means it has a dark side and infers it’s a lot like an episode of Mr Squiggle in more ways than one.
Moon on Earth: Iceland
Iceland. No trees, fantastic deserts, interesting customs and big coast (well the Moon is nearly all coast now that the water left) – does this sound like heaven to you? Then plan your next spacewalk to Iceland! Located near the end of the Earth, just go straight ahead at England and you can see Ultima Thule for yourself: lava flows, picturesque mountains and in winter scarcely any sunlight – it’s like the nearside and the dark side of the Moon rolled into one! And if its music that you want, because even Mr Squiggle likes to tap his toes to some bangtastic beats sometimes, then head up for the Airwaves Festival in October where you can see half of Iceland turn out for the local music festival to end them all. Talking steam-shovel anyone?
Mr Squiggles Travel Tip: Do it yourself!
If none of these moon-like suggestions are ringing any bells then try something different altogether. Stop wasting time with the “let’s go here, then there, then over there” approach to working out how to get around the island of your choice for your next holiday – why not give a pen to the youngest or most footloose member of the household, get ‘em to do a big fat squiggle on it, turn it upside down and then find some roads that match up? Brilliant!
You’ll be on your personal road to nowhere (or adventure kids-style) in no time flat – and like all good squiggles, filling in the lines between the dots should be done in god’s own time.
Should all this fail, a trip to Amsterdam could well deliver something close to Mr Squiggle’s idea of a space walk, but the location isn’t quite the moon, just another a smoky café. Hold my hand, Miss Jane!
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July 20th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Mr Squiggle was one of my favourite shows as a kid. His ability to transform weird lines into images boggled me everytime. It still does!