After a brief stop in Melbourne (did the obligatory sight seeing and caught up on some sleep) we had a week in Adelaide with our friends Phil & Jo.
Phil & Jo (and Floyd the friendliest Staff in the world) emigrated to Australia about 2 years ago, and we hadn’t seen them since. We stayed in their lovely house in Port Adelaide, a suburb about 20 mins from the city centre. The house is a typically Aussie single-storey affair, with palm trees in the front garden, big breezy rooms, a large garden with a veggie patch sprouting everything from lettuce to bell peppers (or capsicums they call them out here), and a garage that Phil is converting into a good ol’ British pub!
Adelaide is in the state of South Australia and is situated on a flat plain contained by the sea to the West and the rolling Adelaide hills to the North. If there’s one thing Australia has in abundance it’s space and this is reflected in the layout of Adelaide. There is no imperative need to build upwards so most of the buildings outside of the city proper are wide and flat; the roads that disect the city have up to 3 or 4 lanes each way and even two tram lines in some places; traffic is pretty much unheard of; there is plenty of parkland and even free parking areas dotted around; massive American-style uber-stores line the city’s in-roads, with such delights as a drive in 24-hour off licence (or ‘bottlo’) and an unusual number of Adult ‘emporiums’!
In between supping cocktails in the sunny garden, eating home-cooked food, barbecues, and boozing in the city, we actually managed to pack a lot of other activities in:
We took a tour to the Maclaren Vale, one of the top 5 wine producing areas in the world. A tour guide met us in the city and we headed out towards the valley. As we drove through parched – SA is the driest state in the driest continent of the world – yet still green woodland the guide imparted various facts about Adelaide (it’s the only city in Oz named after a lady, King William IV’s wife, for instance) and the woodland soon gave way to the undulating hills of the Maclaren Vale, contoured with autumnal grape vines, olive trees and rose bushes (apparently rose bushes are used as an early warning system for crop diseases). During the day we went tasting at 6 different wineries, sampled locally grown olives, had a tour of a winery which explained the whole production process, from picking to bottling, and Amy even managed to talk one of the growers into letting her feed his kangaroo (no, that’s not a euphemism!).
On another day we went to Mt. Lofty, the highest peak in the Adelaide hills. The view of the city from the top was breathtaking – the tree-clad hills fell away below us like fields of brocolli towards the vaulted office blocks and stately museums of the city centre, encased, like a green moat, by a thick belt of parkland. The suburbs splayed outwards, defined by their wide boulevards and in the far distance the sea spread across the horizon. Much to Amy’s pleasure, Mt. Lofty is also home to Clelland Wildlife Park, where she got to partake once again in what is becoming her favourite passtime – feeding kangaroos! The kangaroos, some with little joeys peeking out of their pouches, lounged and hopped around along with wallabies, koala bears, emus, bandicoots, Tasmanian devils and possum, all in a perfect hilltop setting where the trees sported a wintry white sheen under their half-peeled bark.
We also went rambling at the nearby Morialti Gorge. Of course, the rain had figured out where we were by now but, unperturbed, we donned our Pak-a-Maks…and got soaked! It was worth it though, we were rewarded by some awesome views of the layered brown and granite sheer sides of the gorge and saw the year’s first spurts of water trickle their way down the thirsty waterfall. We visited an enormous flea-market that was almost the size of Heathrow’s T5 at the port, where for some reason the water was brimming with jellyfish; we perused the stalls of Central Market (the biggest indoor market in the Southern Hemisphere no less!) where you can buy just about every foodstuff known to man; and of course we went to the beach, which was only about 10 minutes from P & J’s house and had sand that was a soft as silk.
On our last night we went to a live Aussie Rules Football match! Unfortunately the team that we were ‘for’, Port Power, got humiliated 32 – 104 by St. Kilda, a Melbourne team. It’s a great game to watch, played by consummate giants with plenty of crunching collisions, sickening tackles and even the odd punch-up! Best of all though, was when ‘the Port’ were going through a particularly bad spell and some of the supporters around us decided to hurl obscenities at the ref/umpire. One called him a ‘flamin’ turkey’, another ‘a bloody great girl’ and a third even likened his IQ to the number on the back of his shirt (1). Frankly we were disgusted – you’d never hear that sort of language at a football match back home. You should have heard us tutting.
As you can see, we had a busy week at P & J’s. It was a respite from travelling – a home from holiday, so nice to have a few home comforts – a nice bed, warm showers, TV, music, home-cooked food – and really good to see P & J. We were sad to leave at the end of the week (we even put our flight back one day.) but we had to fly to Cairns to pick up our Wicked Campervan tomorrow and begin our journey down the East coast.