Adelaide and another brithday missed.....................

Too slow crossing the road

My Hotel - No doorknobs,13 foot high ceilings, halls like a maze.
Reminded me of "The Devil in the WHite City"

A four hour bus ride, overnight ferry and nine hour train ride brought me from Hobart Tasmania to Adelaide South Australia. Sure I could have flown it in a couple hours, but where’s the odyssey in doing that? Adelaide is a small city, laid out in a sensible grid pattern like Chicago, surrounded by a ring of parkland. It has the feel of an older city, one that time has passed by;a little slower, a little more laid back. If Sydney is an iPad then Adelaide is an Apple II. A couple of unusual things I learned from talking with a bus driver: Adelaide has a one way express way; in the morning it goes in one direction in the evening it reverses. Not just some lanes like in Chicago, but the entire expressway. So if you need to go north when it’s going south you’re out of luck. It did not make sense to him. Another thing is the Obahn bus. In the city it works like a normal bus, but then there is a section of its’ route where it drives itself, before becoming a regular bus again at the end.  I did not take a ride on the bus but apparently for part of the route the bus rides between two low concrete walls and there are little wheels coming out from the side of the bus which hold it in place. I saw the side wheels on the bus as it was driving around town.

Unlike the rest of Australia, the state of South Australia (SA) was founded by freemen, not convicts and with pride they make a point of letting you know; however, I find the convict past much more interesting. I did a walking tour of the Adelaide gaol. Adelaide originally didn’t even build a gaol thinking they wouldn’t need one since they were settled not by convicts but by freemen. They changed their minds rather quickly and amazingly the gaol was used up to 1988. Part of the gaols security system was loose bricks stacked in a honey comb pattern on top of the walls. If someone tried to climb over the wall, the bricks would fall making noise, thus alerting the guards. The art gallery of SA is a compact building with a nice selection of colonial art and Australian artists. In the entry to the gallery are 3 of 5 panels from Napier Waller’s “The pastoral pursuits of Australia”. The artist lost his right arm in WWI and relearned to paint with his left hand, and is considered Australia’s finest mural painter.  The Australian museum, what I would call their natural history museum, has a superb collection of artifacts from the south pacific islands surrounding Australia, especially Papua, New Guinea. My timing was bad for this one; the children are off from school and the museum was filled with kids and their parents.

Kangaroo Island (KI) is the third largest island of Australia, with Tasmania being the largest. I did a one day tour of KI from Adelaide which I would not recommend. It takes some time to get to the island by bus/ferry from Adelaide and the island is larger than expected; a day trip is just too short to enjoy all the island has to offer.  KI has 4000 people, 40,000 cows, and 400,000 sheep; indigenous animals; kangaroos, wallabies, echidna, and others; and the Ligurian bee, imported from Italy many years ago, which makes a fine tasting honey. You have to smile when you hear laughing Kookaburas; their laugh is funny and contagious. Our first stop on the island was seal beach. Sea lions come ashore on this beach year round and you can walk down to the beach with a guide and get close, but not as close as I thought we would. Since it was winter there weren’t many sea lions on the beach and almost all were sleeping. If you come during mating season there will be upwards of two animals, with the big bulls vying for the females. That would be the best time to visit. We drove through Flinders Chase National Park; miles of natural vegetation, mostly eucalyptus; to get to the aptly named “Remarkable Rocks”. This is a giant upthrust of granite situated right on the shore; that has been eroded over eons by wind and waves into stunning art-like rock formations. The granite is slick like that on Mt. Amos, and can get very slippery when wet; also the winds can be quite strong. Signs posted everywhere about the dangers, still 6 people died falling off the rocks. Tasmania has me spoiled, there were about 25 tourists at the site and I found that to be too many…… wait until I get to China!

Our penultimate stop was at “Admirals Arch”. Once again wind and waves have done their duty carving a huge, jagged, arch along the craggy shoreline. Stalactites hang from the roof and Australian fur seals bask on the rocks below. The one thing photos don’t capture is the smell. The seals are pretty stinky. Even with the brisk ocean breeze you can smell them long before you see them. The arch is impressive. Our final stop before the two hour bus ride to catch the ferry was at the animal park to see some kangaroos and koalas. This was as quick as a pit stop at Indy, there’s some roo’s …..quick take a picture; there’s a koala or two ……quick take a picture …….back on the bus. It’s not the tour company, they are trying to show you as much as they can in the allotted time; it’s my own fault for not scheduling more of it on the island. It was dark as we headed back. It is Australian law that you have to wear your seatbelt on the bus and in this case it was a necessity.

Kangaroo Island, as its’ name implies, has kangaroos on it, lots of them; and kangaroos are very active at night. There are no lights on the road and the roo’s come darting out from the bush like deer do at home. (This is why I would never drive on the island with my sister-in-law J) The bus driver is prepared for them, but still twice on the way back we almost hit some crossing the road; it has happened before, it will happen again.

And I missed another birthday.This time it is my wife Jo; today is her birthday. She is the absolute best. Without her support I would not be writing this message from Australia. I love you dear.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!