Part 5 - Adelaide & Surroundings
March 22 - 24, 2008
Saturday, March 22nd: Adelaide
We actually slept in (well, until about 9 AM) on this Saturday morning, and then went out to try to find breakfast. The city was oddly devoid of food, and the places we did find were closed - probably a combo of being downtown on the weekend, and it being the Saturday before Easter. Thankfully, we eventually stumbled upon food nirvana, the Central Market - kind of like a farmer's market bustling with people and full of vendor booths selling all kinds of stuff, from mushrooms to nuts to baked goods and coffee. I had the best muffin of all time - it was moist, chocolaty, and had chocolate icing with two pieces of chocolate and a piece of white chocolate stuck into the icing. It was awesome. We also found the Haigh's chocolate store, where we got free samples of some really good milk and dark chocolate, and I bought a stuffed Easter Bilby (the Australian version of the Easter Bunny, with a little marsupial standing in for the rabbit). The girl at the shop asked if I was from Adelaide, because I "had a bit of an accent."
We walked around Victoria Square (a public square at the center of the city's grid), and then walked up King William Street to the Rundle Street Mall, an open air shopping district. We did a bunch of browsing and shopping. I finally found the Persian Rugs CD I'd been hunting for my friend Jeff in about the 5th record store we went in, and I also found a copy of U2's "A Celebration" 45 (an old non-album single) for $9, which seemed like a pretty good deal. Julie bought some books and some housewares at a store called "Wheel and Barrow" (kind of an Australian version of Crate and Barrel, I guess). We also visited a disappointing Toys R Us store. Out on the street, we saw some cool public art - statues of pigs - and a few street musicians, including a disproportionate number of young kids playing the violin.
The weather was nice (maybe a little hot in the sun in the middle of the day, especially after chilly Tasmania). The city was awesome - very clean and compact, lots of good shopping, and no hills. We walked north to the Botanic Gardens, which were large enough to be interesting, but small enough to be manageable and easy to see. We checked out the Palm House, played with some ducks, and looked at some plants in the gardens - the dahlia garden was particularly nice. I played around taking pictures of my shadow while I waited on Julie. We also saw one of my all time public notice signs posted next to an old log on display in the garden.
After the Botanic Gardens, we walked north to the zoo. The first area we visited was the petting zoo, where I petted many things - a cow, a sheep, some deer, a kangaroo (surprisingly soft), and some small wallaby-like thing, maybe a potoroo. Julie was prissy and wouldn't pet anything. We had trouble following the zoo map for some reason, so we wandered around a lot trying to figure it out. We saw some siamangs that were very active, swinging around the trees. The otters were weird, making horrible noises and looking threatening, but unfortunately not biting stupid kids feeding them apples from the beaver enclosure. We also saw a bunch of other animals, including a binturong, some adorable guinea pigs, and a meerkat. There were some great signs posted, including a breakdancing guy and a disturbing alcohol awareness sign. And finally, a camera misfire resulted in either a bad lorikeet photo or an impressionist masterpiece - you be the judge!
After we left the zoo, we walked along the River Torrens, which flows through the city. It was smaller than I thought it would be, but it was pretty. Apparently not long before we visited, a minor celebrity had lost a child in the river when she stopped to answer a phone call and her baby carriage had rolled into the river, which is simultaneously really tragic and really dumb. We passed a couple taking wedding photos, and we saw people fishing in the river. For some reason they were leaving piles of fish on the bank to die - some kind of invasive species, maybe? After walking by St. Patrick's Church, and a nearby cricket statue, we wandered around some government buildings, read some historical markers, and looked at some war memorials. Then we tried to go to the grocery store, but everything had closed by 5:30 in the afternoon due to the holiday.
Once we got back to the hotel, and I was exhausted and sore and felt a little sick. We watched some TV (Mythbusters, Top Gear, and a Dirty Jobs that I'd never seen before), and once I started feeling better, we decided to order room service. Big mistake - it cost us $50 for two plates of plain spaghetti and meat sauce with no sides. Ridiculous. Julie took advantage of the tub to take a bubble bath (and we tried to watch the water drain to see which way it would spin), and then called it a day.
Sunday, March 23rd: Adelaide to Kangaroo Island
Having learned nothing from our dinner the night before, we went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, where we paid $49 for a buffet that didn't have much more on it than what you get at Hampton Inn, and wasn't much better. Then we went to the convenience store next door for some emergency rations in case everything was closed (it was Easter Sunday) - the food there was cheap by comparison. We checked out of the hotel, and felt a little taken advantage of - $100 for our last two meals, and $50 for two nights of parking. Ouch.
We drove out of town to Mt. Lofty, a mountain just outside of town that offered a nice (if hazy) view of the city. We saw Flinders Column, a big concrete tower, at the top, and saw a bandicoot wandering around eating some sort of weird flying ants. Then we walked a short nature trail where we saw a lot of interesting birds. Next, we drove to the Mt. Lofty Botanic Gardens, which wasn't a lot of fun. The gardens were huge, and were more vertical than horizontal - basically a bunch of trees and shrubbery on a 45 degree incline. The map was impossible to follow, so we wandered around lost then sweated and toiled our way back to the car and left.
Our next stop was the Warrawong Wildlife Sanctuary, which offered free admission during the day. We saw some geese, a turtle, a couple of caged birds, 2 koalas, 2 kangaroos, and a wallaby. They allegedly had a lake with platypus in it, but we didn't see them, strengthening my belief that they are mythical. We bought some food to feed to animals, but didn't encounter anything that wanted to eat. We also had a conversation with a local couple as we wandered the trails. They asked where we were from (Atlanta), and kind of assumed that we'd be underwhelmed by Australian cities like Adelaide. That was far from the truth - Adelaide isn't the size of LA, or even Atlanta, but it certainly seemed to be the size of somewhere like Charlotte, and it was beautiful and fun and nothing to be underwhelmed by.
We drove on through some small, quaint towns on the way to the coast, including Bridgewater (which had an old mill with a giant wheel), Hahndorf (a German town), Strathalbyn (which offered a nice park, lots of white birds, and a good lunch), Goolwah (the mouth of the Murray River), Port Elliot (with a nice beach, blue ocean, and a cliff-top walking path), and Victor Harbor (where we climbed a bluff called Rosetta Head). Along the way, I once again got a kick out of the logo on a hand dryer, with the kangaroo from the Australian seal drying its hands while an emu watches. The drive was very pretty, with rolling hills; cattle and sheep and a couple of fields of alpacas; possibly a wild kangaroo (but we didn't get a good look); occasional ocean views; and some big wind power windmills.
The purpose of all this driving was to get to Cape Jervis, about 67 miles south of Adelaide, where we were catching a vehicle ferry out to Kangaroo Island for a couple of nights. The last stretch into Cape Jervis was particularly cool, and we made a note to have a look around that area a bit when we came back through. We watched the ferry come in from Kangaroo Island, and it was very full of people and cars. But on our trip out to Kangaroo Island (the last trip of the day), it was basically empty - there were three cars on it, and I suspect that 2 of them belonged to ferry employees because we were the only passengers on the boat. I took a picture of some interesting rocks as we pulled away from the dock.
The ferry ride takes about 45 minutes, and the ferry had a snack bar. Shortly into the trip, they announced "last call" for buying anything from the snack bar (basically a "hey, do y'all want anything," since we were the only people around), but we declined. Then the snack bar closed and they said "hey, do y'all want anything for free, because we're going to throw it away otherwise," so we availed ourselves of a free dinner (and put a good tip in the tip jar). When we got to Kangaroo Island, we had to wait to dock, because our ferry had departed 30 minutes early and the return ferry hadn't left the dock yet. While we were waiting, some smaller boats pulled up really close to the ferry, which seemed odd until we saw the crew lowering a bag of leftover snack bar food to one of the boats - apparently everybody knew each other, and this was just one of the perks of friendship.
Eventually, we docked and got off the ferry. We tried and failed to locate the Penguin Centre, location of our activity later that evening, and then went to the hotel and checked in. Our room was small and kind of dorm-like, but not bad. The town (Penneshaw) was very quaint and rural. After dark, we found the Penguin Centre for our Little Penguin viewing tour. This was a much smaller, lower key operation than the Penguin Parade on Phillip Island that we saw back in 2005, and we saw a few penguins just standing around before the tour even started.
As it turned out, we kind of got screwed on the tour. There were a ton of people there, so they split the tour group in two, and our group had to walk a long way to a different viewing platform, only saw a few penguins rather fleetingly by flashlight, had to leave the platform early to let the other group in, and didn't go back to the other area to see what the other group had seen. It was really kind of a bust, but we did see and hear a few penguins. Back at the hotel, we listened to a few more penguins in the bushes across the street from our hotel, then went to our room and turned in for the night.
Monday, March 24th: Kangaroo Island
We ate a quick granola bar breakfast in the hotel room, and then drove out to explore Kangaroo Island. We had a big list of stuff all around the island that we wanted to do, and the island was pretty big (about 56 miles long by 35 miles wide). As we drove, we saw a lot of roadkill all up and down the road, and a few live animals, too. Julie saw a kangaroo in a field, and we saw a pair of them hopping off the side of the road; we also saw a bunch of snails. We saw a sign for Prospect Hill, basically a big sandy hill held together by vegetation with 512 steps going up it, so we decided to go climb it. On the way up, we saw a lot of animal tracks in the sand, and the view from the top was awesome. We saw a bank of fog rolling across the island, down a hill, and into the ocean off in the distance, which was a really cool sight.
Our next stop was Clifford's Honey Factory, a family business where they make honey in a really old-fashioned way: they collect it from bee boxes, remove it from the combs, and sell it. They had lots of honey and bee-related stuff in the gift shop, a little display area with a video about their operation, a glass beehive, and some other information displays. We tried chocolate covered honeycomb and honey ice cream, and both were really good. I bought some more candy, and Julie bought some mead and a stuffed bear as souvenirs.
As we drove a dirt road off the highway to our next destination, we passed a funny sight - a bunch of sheep all lined up in a row across the field. I guess it was feeding time and they were all at a feed trough or something, but it was an odd looking thing. A few miles down the road, we stopped at the Emu Ridge Eucalyptus Oil Distillery, another family owned business. They also use a very old-fashioned process to distill eucalyptus oil, boiling eucalyptus branches in a big pot, collecting the oil and water, and then refining the oil again before selling it. Their equipment was interesting - their oil/water separator was an old beer keg, for example. They used steam and solar power, so the whole operation was self-contained, with no reliance on the power grid. They had a few emus (including some babies, which were awesome, and just looked like miniature emus) on the property. One of the owners also rescues orphaned animals. She had a baby kangaroo sleeping in a basket by the door, wrapped up in an old sweater (or a "jumper" as the Aussies call them). It hardly looked real, and was sleeping peacefully despite all the attention. One of my photos of it ended up getting noticed and posted on Cute Overload, which was pretty awesome. Julie and I both bought some eucalyptus oil (which is apparently antibacterial, removes stains and sticker glue, and acts as a penetrating oil) and talked a bit of football (Australian and American) with the owner of the place.
Next up was Seal Bay Conservation Park, where we were going to take a ranger-guided tour down to the beach amidst a colony of sea lions. We were a little early for the tour, so we quickly walked down the self-guided boardwalk. The area was beautiful, with blue-green water and dramatic cliffs all around. We saw some sea lions around the beach sunning themselves, nursing, and play fighting, and also saw the skeleton of a young humpback whale on display on the beach. Our guided tour was with a big group, full (as usual) of a lot of irritating, non-instruction-following people. We walked down to a platform together and then walked onto the beach among the sea lions and stood around a lot while the guide tried to get everybody to move or stay together. 45 minutes standing down on the beach was maybe a bit much, but it was fun watching the sea lions do their thing from a bit closer.
On the way to our next destination, we stopped by Little Sahara, which was a giant dune field kind of like the Henty Dunes that we'd seen a week or so earlier, but with even bigger dunes. These dunes were dry and easier to walk on (but still hard work, and the sand gets everywhere). There were a few people out amongst the dunes sitting around or "sandboarding" on sheets of cardboard. It was a pretty amazing sight. Afterward, we drove straight on to Flinders Chase National Park. The area had been recently damaged by fire, so some roads were closed and some of the walking trails we had planned to do were closed or inaccessible, including a platypus trail - foiled again!
We had lunch from our food stash outside the visitor centre, then drove on to the Cape du Couedic lighthouse, which was very picturesque, and walked a little trail around it. The scenery was gorgeous, with high cliffs, massive surf, and a surprise appearance by a colony of fur seals down on the rocks far below. Then we walked the Admirals Arch boardwalk, which was very cool before we even got to the arch - crazy surf on jagged rocks, big waves breaking on a couple of islands just offshore, and seals everywhere. The arch itself was awesome - more big surf and seals, with a giant stone sea arch over the top of it all. We also visited Weirs Cove, which was where supplies were brought ashore and stored for the lighthouse. They had to cut a notch in the cliff to form a ramp from the top to the pier far below, and rigged a cart on a line to pull the goods up the cliff from the pier. I wouldn't have wanted to be in a boat in the surf that we saw.
Our last stop in the park was the Remarkable Rocks, which were aptly named. Several giant granite boulders on the top of a seaside cliff were sculpted by wind and water erosion into crazy shapes. The rocks were also partially covered with lichen, which gave them cool appearances, and there were some drainage channels eroded into the bare rock, as well. A tour group left the area just as we arrived, so we had the rocks mostly to ourselves to play around and take a lot of photos. I also saw another good "stick figures in peril" sign.
We drove along the northern route around the island back toward Penneshaw. Along the way, we took a detour out an 18 km dirt road that was very rough in places to visit Stokes Bay. When we got to the ocean, we were surprised to find a bit of development - a picnic shelter, a cafe, and a little parking lot. There was a tunnel through some rocks at the end of the beach that we were told led to a nice beach (with penguins) and a sheltered, rocky pool. As we walked through the tunnel, though, the tide was coming in and there was a few inches of water already at our feet. We were a little unsure about the conditions, and didn't walk all the way through the tunnel onto the beach, because we saw waves splashing up to the edge of the tunnel. The beach probably would have been nice, and we probably would have been OK (a couple emerged from the tunnel about the time we got back to the car to leave), but we were a little paranoid about getting trapped by the rising tide. I'm still curious about exactly what we missed.
We drove into the town of Kingscote to try to find dinner, and found that the city was pretty much closed. We'd just about given up hope when we spotted a pizza place. Julie and I had differing interpretations of the menu, and she ended up ordering a pizza with no sauce, but it was still pretty good. We drove on to Penneshaw, where our hotel was located, as night fell, and we saw a few wallabies and possums on the side of the road. We listened to the radio to help pass the time after a long day of driving, and heard an odd mix of new top 40 stuff, old Rod Stewart, techno music, and Meat Loaf on the few stations that we could pick up.
Back at the hotel, we needed to do laundry again, but we had to wait on a washer to become available. I watched TV in the room while Julie took my red-light flashlight (like the one that the tour guides at the Penguin Center were using, to not disturb the penguins too much) and went out on her own to take a look at some penguins across the street. Laundry was, of course, a disaster. The hotel had left some laundry in the dryer, so another couple had left their laundry in the washer. They eventually took the hotel laundry out and put theirs in the dryer, but the dryer was broken and kept turning off prematurely. We washed one load of clothes and kept manually restarting the dryer, then hung our clothes on a clothesline outside (at night) while we kept the dryer running for the other couple, and finally ran our clothes in the dryer for a while until they were dry enough. Exhausted, we were finally able to go to bed.