1.4.11 - Lazy day (Adelaide, South Australia)

Adelaide tram

Brass pig in Adelaide

1.4.11 – Lazy day (Adelaide, South Australia)

A day for meandering, with little real objective.  The sand dunes Bill remembers from fifty years ago have disappeared under a marina - large gleaming launches, displacing a lot of water and even more money; luxury apartments, balconies perched one above the other, staring out to sea; expensive restaurants – crisp white cloths, sparkling glassware, shining cutlery, and no customers.  There’s a grassy park beside an old wooden sailing ship, now a family restaurant and fish and chip emporium.  It’s called ‘HMS Buffalo’ and sports a wide-horned buffalo as a figurehead.  Apparently this was the name of the ship that brought the first settlers to Adelaide.

Down to the beach to read a book in the sun while Bill swam albeit briefly, and watch two classes of kids learning the niceties of surfing, which only seems to involve running in and out of the water several times, holding surf boards – presumably this is Lesson One.  On the train into town, some teenagers opposite us fall asleep, heads nodding.  They look like some of the embryonic surfers we saw, and their efforts have clearly worn them out.  In town, we head for the opal factory.  Near where we were in the outback, there are opal mines which we didn’t reach at the time.  Beautiful stones, white with hidden rainbow colours which emerge as you turn them gently in the light.  Bill surprises me with the present of a beautiful opal ring – an early Ruby wedding present.  In the main street, I met a small herd of pigs - brass ones, one of them raking the (brass) rubbish out of the bin.

The River Torrens is wider here, edged with grassy slopes, a huge fountain in the middle and glass ‘paper boats’ beside it.  Providing the motive force for a pedalo is good exercise for the legs, as well as providing company for the black swans swimming alongside - scarlet beaks with white bands across them, soft black feathers which curl on their backs, like a soft floaty collar on a black evening gown.

Back home to Glenelg on the tram, along with a growing number of party goers, dressed to kill, and watched with gimlet eye by a security guard, who was joined by two more at the terminus – a hot time is anticipated in the town tonight!

Two aspects of the population here are worth a mention.  When Bill lived in Australia, the ‘White Australia Policy’ was operating – apartheid by the back door.  So for him a welcome change is the multiracial nature of the city today – African, Indian, Chinese and many others made up a large number of the people we saw on the trams and in the streets and shops.  Secondly, I note that it seems to be quite a youthful population – relatively few older people to be seen.  Bill thinks this can be explained because all the oldies are circulating Australia in caravans.  Could well be so.