Adelaide: Point 169 (Click for Pictures)

Adelaide, besides being our first REAL city, it’s the city we have stayed in the longest. It is laid out with grand design. There are parks all around the core of the city and extending along the “rivers” into the Adelaide hills. The main streets are broad. We stayed in the Windsor Gardens Caravan Park along the Torrens River. There are walking and bike paths along both banks and a large variety of wildlife, mostly birds, lives along the river. The park has its own flocks of ducks, crested pigeons, galahs and cockatoos, not to mentions the occasional swamp-hen, rainbow lorikeet, crow, magpie etc. One Australian-city progressive way, is that they all provide plastic bags for dog-poo pick up!

We took a long walk along the river at dusk with the Baseharts the first night we were there. You can go from the hills to the beach on bike paths and there were regular groups of morning walkers. On our walk we crossed over the Adelaide O-ban. It is their mass transit system and consists of two concrete tracks that are traversed by propane-powered buses. The buses have little wheels on the front that lock down into the sides of the concrete tracks when the bus goes from street travel to O-ban travel. Then they streak off to their destination along the O-ban and get off near their final route.

One of my main objectives in Adelaide was to talk with Brian Croser. Dr. Croser is pretty much the father of the Australian wine industry. Along with some colleagues, he produced the definitive styles for Australian Reisling, Chardonnay and probably some other varietals. His latest project, Australia Wine 2030, is a 20 million dollar University of Adelaide study using climatic models and economic models to predict the varieties that will do well both in the world market and with global climate change for the different wine producing regions in Australia. I was hoping that I could get involved in this project since it combines three of my interests, mapping, wine and geology. But the mapping portion is not very specific and there are some practical and political reasons for that. I was honored that Dr. Croser could spare an hour to talk with me at his well-appointed house overlooking Petaluma Vineyard and Winery. Then we headed back to Adelaide for a wonderful meal of Barramundi, a southern ocean fish, at the Baseharts.

Adelaide has a LOT of churches and the most diverse population of any city in Australia. Mike Basehart teaches at Stradbroke School. There are children there from 57 different countries. We stopped by the school after a day using their home Internet connection (a thousand blessings for that), and exploring downtown Adelaide by bus and on foot. The Central Market there is famous for the variety, price and excellence of the produce, fish, meat, cheese, baked goods, oriental, organic and many other kinds of food, services etc. (We hoped to stock up there on our way back from Perth but didn’t get the chance because we came back the evening before Good Friday, and practically every business, except petrol stations and a few supermarkets, in the State closes for that.) We were also happy to find we could get full exchange on our American Express Traveler’s checks if we went to one of their offices. We ran out of time to see their Aboriginal cultural center (Tadanya). So, after picking up Mike and Aerin at the school, we took a short drive to Morialta Falls Conservation Park. The big deal here for us was that a lot of koalas live there. Sure enough, we got a pretty close-up look at a koala almost as soon as we got out of the car, and spotted more than a dozen more as we walked up to the (dry) falls and back. In that same 1^st sighting tree was a bird called the “Tawny Frogmouth”. It was very hard to see because it blends right into the limb it sits on. We also walked up a stairway to “Giant’s Cave”, a big opening on the side of the cliff with a grand view of the canyon. The posts and other fixtures of the park are made from durable hardwoods. The trees were as amazing as anything else. It is illegal to cut old gum trees in Adelaide, so the city is very green and the trees are magnificent, none more so that those in the park, so carefully pruned by the koalas.

After some painful reality checks about the cost of airfare to Perth, we decided that we may never get any closer and arranged a short trip to get there and back before their school holidays began. On our fourth morning in Adelaide, Paula Basehart drove us to the airport and we were on a plane to Western Australia.