Our second stop in Australia was Adelaide, the
capital of South Australia. Adelaide is on the south coast but
because the coast bends around a corner there, the Southern Ocean,
or more precisely, the Gulf of St. Vincent is actually to the west,
not the south.
Adelaide has a large central square, Victoria
Square. Its really an oval. That sounds a little odd but
Philadelphians dont think its odd that Logan Square is a circle.
The population of Adelaide is listed in various sources at about 1.1
million. One wonders what theyre counting because the maps show
Adelaide to be only about one square mile or so with other little
towns around it. Maybe Im reading the maps wrong. We walked around
much of Adelaide and North Adelaide in only a couple hours. It seems
like a sleepy place but very warm and cozy. There are lots of homes
that one might find in Florida, one story places with no basements.
There is a large festival center here and its
used frequently. The
festivals seem to happen almost back to back. For example,
theres one for "V8 supercars," a music festival, a bicycle race
through city and country roads, and more. We discovered we had just
missed Pat Metheny at
one festival and we were also just ahead of
Mandy Patinkin at
another.
On this, our first trip to Australia, we didnt
get to
Ayers
Rock, the famous monolith in the center of the country not too
far, relatively speaking (280 miles), from Alice Springs. We did,
however, get to
Ayers House. The house is nice but I suspect the
rock is much more impressive. Henry Ayers left England for Australia
at the age of 19 with a brand new bride in 1840. He made a fortune
in the copper mines. He went into politics and was the premier of
South Australia for several years. Because of his support of the
exploration of the interior of the continent, the rock was named for
him. Of course, the aborigines had another name for it,
Uluru, and it is usually referred to by that name now.
We stayed in a beach town called
Glenelg
about six miles south of Adelaide. The town looked like
something out of the 20s. There is a
streetcar of that
era that goes
to Adelaide and the stores along the main street also fit that
period. The main street comes to an end at the gulf and thats where
the town hall and the old hotel are located. Its a pretty nice
place to spend a couple quiet days.
See all my pictures of Adelaide.
See a video from Adelaide. |