AusTour 19: Adelaide: the complete Review

Adelaide was great overall. It was like Melbourne multiplied by 0.65 and with 10 times the amount of grass. It was definitely quieter than Melbourne can ever be—not as exciting. On the plus side it makes a great place to get away from the city yet still be in the city if you know what I mean. The transport system isn’t great, but it’s not a big city so there is little problem. It was a good place to add on to the end of trip, not as expensive or as hot as Uluru and Alice springs, or as far as Perth, with enough to keep a tourist occupied and satisfied for a couple of days. And I can earnestly say I was satisfied.

AusTour 18: Adelaide Day Two

After a less exciting and informational ride back to Adelaide I stored my luggage in the terminal (having to return later that night) for day two in Adelaide. The first stop I made, and one I had seen the day before was the Rundle Street mall. Here I counted no less that 3 clowns, at least 7 instrument performers (including a singer, harmonica-ist, two boys emphatically playing ‘pep-band’ songs on trumpets, and several guitarists), 1 free tattoo lady [i was tempted...], 2 people on huge balls, and a couple of other people I cant remember right now. Rundle Street mall is a pedestrian only section of Rundle Street with more shops than your dog has fleas. Following that I walked up to the Adelaide oval for an actual tour. The old man who led it, dressed to the nines (or perhaps the eights) in a uniform you would probably expect from the turn of the century (20th that is) was fairly informative about the history of the oval and its specific significance in cricket history (host of the ashes in 1884 where England won!) as well as some of the major players after whom the stands had been named. We got to go out onto the oval grass (pretty cool) but the most impressive part was going inside the traditionally kept and still operable scoreboard. It’s a fairly mammoth task of operating this monster, and required at least 4 men on a good day.Following the oval tour I went down to the Adelaide art museum. Mostly this was to see some of their Aboriginal Art (Again for my essay), but I also spent some time in their more classical art of which they have a lot. For free entry it was good just walk quickly through the fairly sizable rooms for a quick glance at the art. As five o’clock neared again and everything in Adelaide began to shut down I headed down through Adelaide Uni to the banks of the Torrens. I sat for a while on the quite banks of the river, watching the ducks, rowers and sun sinking in the sky.
As the day drew to a close I grabbed dinner before heading back to the bus terminal for my bus back to Melbourne to end the trip. It was an overnight bus getting into Melbourne at 6:30 in the morning. It was good to be back in Melbourne, a city that is now incredibly familiar to me, but it was also nice to be away from it. Somehow I managed to get from Southern Cross station to my apartment without a single tram passing in my direction, a 30 minute walk.

AusTour 17: Kangaroo Island

aka the most unplanned and inefficient part of the entire trip. I had decided to go to kangaroo island on a whim—it was in the vicinity of Adelaide and was relatively easy to get to. What I didn’t decide on was how exactly I would get around such a large island. Most people rent cars or take tours to see the entire island. Me, I didn’t. Regardless of this deficiency I decided to treat Kangaroo Island as a day to relax, to take it slow for once on the trip.
The day began with a 6:45am bus from Adelaide bus terminal to make a ferry at 9. The bus and ferry were run by the same company, sea link. The bus driver was friendly even for such an hour and gave some pretty good commentary coming out of Adelaide and down through the valleys and wine (and olive) valleys. I’m sure it was interesting but I don’t remember much about it, partially and mostly because it was SO GAWD DAMN EARLY IN THE MORNING. Anyway when the bus got to the 45 min ferry line I saw the high and rough seas, groaned and took a travel sick pill before hiding in the centre of the ship away from anything that proved just how much we were rocking. Arriving in one piece and without any spillages, I disembarked to find a place to drop my stuff. Id seen the YHA from the ship so knew it wasn’t far and when I got there I found my key on the counter and let myself into my room. The owner of the hostel sprang up from nowhere after about five minutes and she was really nice and helpful. With my bags stowed in my room of six for one (!) I went ‘into town,’ what I mean by that is I went into the two roads that run parallel to form Penneshaw. The lady at the info desk was entirely unhelpful and arrogant so I left with little more than a map. With it only being about 11am I went into the only café in town, ordered a cup of tea and sat down with the days paper (how Bill Byrson!).
The owner of Kangaroo Island YHA had told me about a track along the coast and out to the ruins of a house. I decided I would walk that, having nothing else to do and no way to get anywhere else. The walk was pleseant and quiet, the sun was warm and the sky clear. I stumbled upon a group of wallabies and spent a while with them (probably most to their distress). It was a very casual wonder up and along the cliffs, in no hurry and stopping often to sit and look out to sea or across the hills. There was no hurry that had existed in the past 10 days, so it was entirely relaxing just to be able to go as fast or slow as I wanted. On the way back I saw some dolphins just off shore and watched them before they disappeared.
Back in Penneshaw I sat on the beach just taking in the atmosphere and basking in the sun for the remaining part of the afternoon. Again, incredibly relaxing atmosphere. After dinner there was a walk around the little penguin’s habitat for incredibly cheap. Unfortunately their colony has been decimated by seals eating the returning penguins so they weren’t nearly as loud or numerous as their Phillip Island cousins. After that I went across the road back to the YHA where I talked with 2 of the 4 other people staying there for a good while in the sitting room before heading to bed to depart the next morning at 11 back to Adelaide.
Kangaroo Island: the Complete Review
Yeah, I didn’t do anything really, but that was good. In the end that’s what I really wanted—not another action packed adventure. It’s definitively worth a visit if you do it right, there are lots of attractions on this quarantined island, they’re just spread out. With that in mind ill have to plan something better and come back to really explore the island.

AusTour 16: Adelaide Day One

As my first day in Adelaide dawned I decided I was going to follow the walking tour in the Lonely Planet book. We’d followed the one previously in Brisbane and it turned out alright (apart for being tired at the end). I headed north towards the start the botanical gardens and National Wine Centre. At some point I decided I didn’t want to do the tour because it had left out some of the places I wanted to see, so I used it as a rough guide before departing from it completely. My first stop was the Nation Wine Centre; Adelaide and South Australia are where a lot of Australia’s wine is produced (this and the Yarra Valley in Victoria), so I thought it an apt stop. The ‘museum’ was fairly generic and uninformative, the entrance rises above an open cellar and it was absolutely packed with wines of all kinds which was kind of interesting. From the Wine Centre I entered the botanical gardens. Adelaide’s botanical gardens are (smartly) split into two parts the actual gardens with plants of every kind for all over the world and, what most Aussies use Botanical Gardens for, the Botanic Park. The dichotomy allows the plants to grow and be admired and allows a place for Aussies to play and relax on weekends and days off (all the other botanical gardens I’ve seen in Australia mix the two). I walked through the rose garden, a symmetrical walk garden and past a pretty good replication of a Mediterranean house and garden and out past the zoo. The zoo was on my list of ‘maybes’ but looked uninviting from the road so I skipped it for now and continues over the Torrens into North Adelaide. Here I stopped quickly at St Peters cathedral where I was told pretty enthusiastically about their new stained glass windows that apparently represent Australia and its history. My next stop was the Adelaide Oval, I had planned to take a tour there and luckily the afternoon tours would start in the next couple of days. A stayed for a bit (the oval is part of Adelaide parks so you can just walk in) and watched the grounds men converting the footy pitch to a cricket ground. Following the oval I walked back into the CBD towards Tandanya an aboriginal Art museum (at that point I had to write a paper on indigenous Australia art for one of my Uni classes). The museum was showing aboriginal weaving at the time, which was fairly interesting and different from the painting traditionally associated with aboriginal art. With the working day closing I finished off my main attractions for the day in the Adelaide museum. The museum was fairly disorganized; there was no narrative just a show and tell performance. It was funny though seeing some of the North American animals in the mammal’s exhibit—mammals like the black bear which I see all too much off. As the museum closed I went up to Lights Vision which I believe is the highest natural point in the inner city with a view out onto the CBD. There was one thing left to do that day and that was to find dinner which was little problem, what was a problem was finding ice-cream anywhere in Adelaide—I mean proper ice-cream, the homemade stuff not the generically produced. Adelaide for one reason or another is completely devoid of ice-cream. I went back to My Place for the night and talked to some cool people about Kangaroo Island (where I would go the next day) and life in general. I had to go to sleep early because the bus left at 6:45. Yay.

AusTour 15: Adelaide an Arriving and Intro

Barry had left to return to Melbourne as his classes were starting up again, as Uni Melbourne didn’t start up for another week I had some more time to hit some more places. I chose to explore Adelaide for those days. I arrived into Adelaide later that night after leaving Sydney, slightly confused when the captain announced the time adding ‘if you want to change your watches.’ Id talked to a lady who had just come in international so I thought nothing of it, until I realized my phone clock and every other clock in the airport differed by 30 min’s (not a full hour, surprising). I’d done I little bit of research into how exactly to get from Adelaide airport to my accommodation—My Place Backpackers. I had to take a bus, I didn’t know which one nor when exactly I had to get off. So once again I was learning a transportation system as it was being imposed upon me. Needless to say I almost missed my stop and would have if I hadn’t asked the driver. I stepped out onto the street for the first time entirely in Adelaide (And south Australia for that matter)…and it looked nothing like I thought it would. It didn’t look bad, just different then what I had imagined. I partially blame Bill Bryson for this one I think. He chucked Adelaide and Canberra (Australia’s Capital) to close together in his book ‘In a Sunburned Country.’ I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, something like green lawns and white stone buildings both of which didn’t exist where I was standing and especially in the middle of the night.

Before diving head first into the warm waters of the next days schedule Ill finish this post by describing what Adelaide was, if it wasn’t what I thought it was. If at any point the previous paragraph came off as me depredating Adelaide it was because that was my initial impression as a fell asleep and it wasn’t until the next day (and daylight) that I found it a much nicer place. Adelaide has a pretty bizarre set up. The CBD runs along Torrens River, with North Adelaide sitting on the other side. King William Street runs vertically from north Adelaide through the CBD. Now here something peculiar happens. Road going horizontally across King William Street change names on the other side (Hindley becomes Rundle, Currie becomes Grenfell, Waymouth becomes Pirie, Franklin becomes Flinders etc). Adelaide began as a planned city, planned by Colonel William Light (Lights vision) to whom there is a statue on a hill on the north side of the Torrens. So while the previous illogicality seems to make no sense, there is a sense of direction to the city and it’s fairly easy to navigate. One of the other advantages is the ring (moat) of gardens or parklands that surrounds the inner city. As the inner city ends there is a block of Greenland before the suburbs begin, creating a buffer between the city and the suburbs. So in conclusion Adelaide proceeded to dispel any misconceptions I might have had about it the night before…which was good because I was there for two days.

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Outta Here

Its Spring Break…again! So I’m getting out of Melbourne with Barry from Hartford. We’re flying up to Brisbane tonight, to begin a trip down the coast towards and into Sydney. I’m lazy, so I stole Barry's map of the key stops on the trip.
I should ignore the part about being eaten by a shark. Not because it wont happen, but because I wont be posting a blog anytime in the next 13 days. I also have an extra part tagged on to the end of this trip, down to Adelaide in South Australia being as i have two weeks off for break and Barry only has one.