26-Jun-2005
We arrived in Adelaide around 10:15am in the morning, a bit late since we had a no-show in Hong Kong and their luggage had to be removed from the plane. We got through immigration and customs in record time, despite having to declare lots of items, and made it to our hotel by noon! This is the fastest time yet.
The hotel we're staying in is located on Victoria Square, in the center of Adelaide. Here are some pictures from our hotel room.
Robert headed out to the Rundle Mall to do some exploration while Kathy caught up on some sleep. The mall is quite amazing, with over 500 shops located on a pedestrian-only street, there were street performers as well. A quick trip to Woolworth's for breakfast food and it was back to the hotel.
Sunday evening we took a drive down to Naorlunga, about 30 minutes south of Adelaide, to view the ocean as well as to finally see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. You can tell how often we go out to movies! After the movie it was back to the hotel to catch up on some sleep.
27-Jun-2005
Robert found a laundromat within walking distance so it's off to catch up on the laundry from the past several days. While there he had a nice chat with one of the attendants who had taken a trip to the US several years ago (spent 8 months) and had a great time. When the Australians travel, they travel!
After returning from doing laundry we headed out for lunch and a walk around Adelaide, ending up at the South Australia Museum of Natural History. We spent about 1 hour at the museum since it was close to closing time and saw an excellent exhibit on the aboriginal culture. There was a huge collection of artificats from many aspects of life (from hunting, medicine, fishing, etc). Did you know that one of the ways the natives fished was to put a collection of plants into ponds that would use up oxygen so the fish would have to surface in order to breathe?! Really neat stuff ... definitely worth the visit if in Adelaide.
We briefly stopped by the Botannical Gardens and will probably take the guided tour later this week. We stopped for a coffee (Kathy) and tea (Robert) on our way back to the hotel.
Dinner was at a the local Chinese restaurant, just around the corner.
Editor's Note: It gets kind of confusing when hearing the term "SA". Both of us are used to "SA" standing for "South Africa" ... here it is "South Australia". They even have a UNISA (University of South Australia), that uses the same acronym as the University of South Africa!
28-Jun-2005
Today was a nice slow day for us. We slept in and Robert found a local barber for a much-needed hair cut. Kathy spent most of the day preparing for her class at the Known World Music & Dance event that is happening this coming weekend.
We went out for dinner at the HMS Buffalo restaurant. It is located on a replica of the first ship that brought settlers to Adelaide back in the 1830's. The only major change was to increase the height of the ceilings from the original 5'11" (wouldn't have mattered for either of us, but many people would have had to duck).
Tomorrow morning we're getting up fairly early to drive out to some of the nature / wildlife parks in the area.
29-Jun-2005
We got up early and headed out of Adelaide to visit the Cleland Wildlife Park which is up in the mountains outside the city. We arrived just as the park was opening and quickly realized that we needed to dress even more warmly than we had (luckily the park is only around 20 minutes from Adelaide, so we drove back and picked up our "woolies").
We picked up some kangaroo food on the way in to the park as you're allowed to feed them.
Our first stop in the park was the reptile house where they had specimens of many of Australia's snakes, including the most venomous in the world. This was also a good place to warm up as the temperature was kept rather warm :-).
After warming up, we headed out to see the koala bears up close. As this is a conservation park, we got to ask questions and got to see the animals up close. Koalas will only eat eucalyptus leaves from around 20 of the over 300 varieties of eucalyptus trees ... we didn't know that there were that many varieties!
After leaving the koalas we headed through a gate towards an area that had lots of birds, including some guard ducks.
Guard ducks, you say? Well, I need to segue to a story that happened long ago
at the Cape Town zoo, when Robert was a little child who was gullible enough to listed to his aunts.
Robert's family was visiting the ducks and his aunt said, "go say hi to the duck", so Robert stuck his face up to the cage and said "Hi Ducky!" ... at that point the duck chomped its beak right on the bridge of Robert's nose, which proceeded to bleed and, of course, started a shriek of terror (and guilty feelings from the aunt involved :-).
Anyway ... with that background, we return to the present. As soon as Robert started to crouch down to get a better picture, the ducks started waving their necks and hissing ... to some surprise, Robert backed away and asked Kathy to help save him from the ducks (they even attacked his feet!). After some hilarity, Kathy pulled out some of the kangaroo food and proceeded to distract the ducks while Robert made his escape ... whew! This encounter provided some amusement throughout the day as we walked through the park and saw many other ducks and swans (some of which approached much too close and aggressively for Robert's comfort :-).
So instead of the bunny with nasty little fangs, it's the duck with the nasty beak! Where's the "Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch" when you need it!
After that close encounter we wandered through the rest of the park and saw a variety of animals including kangaroos, echidnas and a tasmanian devil.
The next stop was to the summit of Mount Lofty (about 2500 feet above sea level). There was a great view of the surrounding area, including all the way to Adelaide. This was the area that was devastated during the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983. We then headed out for the scenic drive back to Adelaide, through many windy roads that caused Robert some distress as they were rather narrow and there was a fair amount of traffic coming in the opposite direction. We made it back around 4:15pm, just in time for rush hour so we had to make three lefts in order to make a right ... it actually works! Don't try this in Pittsburgh!
Editor's Note: There is a lot of electronic equipment up at the fire lookout tower. They that it may interfere with various electronic locks, etc. We found that our radio had been set into secure mode but weren't sure how it happened ... when we called Hertz, they asked if we had been out to Mt. Lofty with a Toyota Camry ... apparently this has happened before! We got the code to unlock the radio and will try it out tomorrow morning.
30-Jun-2005
Wow! Another month of the year gone by! We headed over to the Botanical Gardens for a guided tour and learned quite a few things.
I thought that the "protea" family was only native to South Africa, but they have quite a selection in Australia as well! As it is winter here there weren't a lot of flowers to see (one exception was the one called "winter's torch") but we learned quite a bit about the various types of eucalyptus trees.
The gardens were celebrating their 150th anniversary this year (which is only 19 years after Adelaide celebrated its 150th anniversary).
The most interesting plant was the Wollemi Pine which, up until 1994, had only ever been found as fossilized leaves and seeds. The plant at the gardens in enclosed in a cage because a specimen at one of the other gardens had been dug up and stolen!
We concluded our visit with a nice lunch at the cafe in the gardens, where we saw some interesting birds, including this crested dove (looks kind of like a cross between a turtle dove and a cockatiel ... a cockadove????). We headed back to the hotel to get ready for our trip to Sydney (we have to get up around 4:00am!).
Editor's Note: Some news from the home front ...
our air conditioning has apparently died and we'll be contacting Anita (Robert's sister) to make the arrangements to get it fixed. Our sitters brought over some fans and tried to get the dogs to stay in the basement but they keep coming up to the part of the house they're used to being in.
01-July-2005
It's a good thing we showed up to the airport early! Due to the rains and flooding in eastern Australia, one of the Adelaide to Sydney flights was canceled and all the flights this morning are quite full. We're both going on the 9:30am flight and should arrive in Sydney around 11:30am in the morning. We're in the Qantas lounge, which is quite busy due to all the flight delays ... we'll be packing up and getting ready to go in about 15 minutes or so.
