The Tiger Hotel

Luckily, we arrived in Tantanoola on a Schnitzel Wednesday at the Tiger Hotel.

Tantanoola has a population somewhere around 300 people and is off the highway. What it does have is a post office/general store, a wide grassy and shaded railway reserve through the centre of town and the Tiger Hotel. 

The town makes campers welcome with clean public toilets (there is a 24 oncall number on the wall by the wash basin). In return there seems to be an unspoken agreement that the campers eat at the hotel and support the store. 

It seems a great strategy for a small rural town - a way of sustaining local businesses that then can continue to support their towns. 

Our Rojito was among a dozen vans parked under the trees on the railway reserve in the company of a couple of shirtless backpackers in sunglasses charging their phones in the abandoned station house and a fleet of well equipped grey nomads checking their tires.

We dutifully wandered over to the Tiger for an early dinner. It's the sort of warm and friendly place where you are served a giant portion and then given a plate on which to pile salad from the unlimited salad bar. 

In the middle of all this good natured abundance we, shamefully, ordered a single schnitzel with mettwurst - to share. When the lovely and unperturbed waitress offered us two salad plates and two sets of cutlery, we left the second salad plate conspicuously unfilled (and didn't go for seconds) hoping they would at least notice us not taking further advantage of their generosity.  

This was the night we first tested the Jazz's capacity as a camper, with limited success. Luis is somewhere in the vicinity of six foot two and I'm no waif. To the Jazz's credit, we had foolishly prioritised fitting all our camping gear in the front seats, to the detriment of maximal space for the lilo. Beginners mistake that. Anything water proof now goes under the car.

We may look happy here but that's mainly relief at getting the doors closed.
It was downhill from there.

The namesake tiger, by the way, was actually an arctic wolf shot by the fearless locals some time in the nineteenth century. They stuffed it. It's in the pub. What an arctic wolf was doing in rural South Australia is the unanswered question.