Adelaide, Australia

     We spent February 17 in Adelaide, having docked during the night after the very short sail from Penneshaw (less than 10 miles).  Adelaide was first settled by Europeans in 1836, displacing the Aboriginal Kaurna people whose culture was destroyed within a couple of decades.  It was named for Queen Adelaide of England, the wife of William IV.  It is the only state capital in Australia that was settled and built by free settlers rather than convicts, and it has been known from the beginning as a pioneer in civil and religious liberty.  Adelaide is a sizable city, with a population in excess of 1.3 million.

    The port is a good way from the city, so we had to take a train into town.  The train runs between the port and the city center and it was $10 for an all day pass (but really, it was only useful for two trips: into and out of town).  At the railway station we met our friends Robert & Bill, with whom we spent the day.  Leaving the downtown train station we walked down the street past a number of sculptures & monuments, most notably the War Memorial.

     We visited the State Library, which had a gorgeous old part & a snazzy new one full of glass.  We were puzzled by all the old books in the original library, which didn’t seem to have any clear scheme for organizing all of its old books.  Rick suggested maybe it was in order of acquisition, which would be particularly useless.  In front of the library was a statue of Robert Burns, who seems to have been very popular in the Antipodes.

     We spent some time in the South Australia Museum, which includes the largest collection of Aboriginal artifacts in the world & a very extensive natural history exhibit.

     We walked down the part of Rundle Street that is a pedestrian mall.  It is lined with shops & large stores and has street performers and sculptures, including one called Silver Balls.  We also saw signs for the Adelaide Fringe Festival, a three week arts festival that was in progress. In one of the large stores we found the Adelaide City Library, but it was on the top floor and the escalators didn’t go that high.  Puzzled, we walked around and found the entrance in what looked like an alley behind the store. 

     The city library was very nice inside, with a board game area & all the modern conveniences, including a usb charging station.

     After this it was time to eat.  But that wasn’t so easy.  It was Saturday and a lot of stores & restaurants were closed, though we aren’t sure why.  Anyway we did a LOT of walking looking for a pub & eventually settled for what turned out to be a very good pizza restaurant.  It was the first pizza with pumpkin we have had & it turned out to be surprisingly good.  We then walked a long way to a couple of stores we had read about, but they were closed.  So we walked all the way across town to some other stores, which were very expensive and a bit disappointing.

     We were all tired by this time so we headed back to the ship, where we heard that a passenger had been removed by police in handcuffs.  We don’t know why, but suspect it was drugs.  Anyway, that’s it for Adelaide, a pleasant but unspectacular city based on our short experience.