2 December 2011 - Belair National Park Caravan Park, Adelaide, South Australia

Yesterday was our first day venturing into the busy-ness of South Australia’s lovely capital city. We ventured reluctantly into the cold morning, with temperatures somewhere about 12 or 14 degrees, and drove up to the railway car park at Glenalta, just a kilometre away from the caravan park. We had failed to check the timetable, even though we did have a copy on hand, and had to wait twenty minutes for the next train.

The route to the city centre is about twenty kilometres and the greater part of it is through the Adelaide foothills, much of it surrounded in apparently unpopulated bush lands before it drops quite steeply (for an electric train) down into the plains Adelaide sits on. The trip down took about forty minutes and was a lot less stressful than dealing with the bustling of city weekday traffic. It also served to confirm that we are in fact camped well above the city, although only about ten kilometres out as the crow flies.

The railway station in Adelaide is right in the city, on the edge of everything that is happening, so apart from not having to worry about parking, it is only minutes from distractions (or attractions).

We walked about the streets, through the famous Rundle Mall, listening and watching the many buskers and passing mixed comments about the garishness of the Christmas festive baubles hanging about everywhere. We were coerced in to a book store having a grand sale (we never need too much coercion into bookstores) and willingly purchased a world atlas and another book for me to read, one I had read glowing reviews of. We walked the several kilometres up to South Terrace to find the house Chris had lived in once upon a time. Then it was a boarding house, today it stands apparently physically unchanged but for the grills across the verandahs and houses homeless women, according to the well-dressed young woman we approached as she was going in and coming out. It was only on her departure that she told us the truth of its current inhabitants; she had obviously decided we were unlikely kidnappers or journalists.

We caught the tram back into the city centre, free providing one remains within the confines of certain street boundaries. We admired the beautiful buildings and the thongs of the cosmopolitan crowds; dressed well or badly, baring tattoos or not, wrapped in ethnic shrouds or baring too much flesh, and mostly without the  filthy mouths that seem to be so common in cities nowadays.

Carol singers in Rundle Mall

Sometime after one, the day started to warm up and we removed our jackets, and continued our exploration of the festive streets. We wandered through the Adelaide Arcade and admired the fancy shops and tearooms, and the equally fancy customers, but were more taken with the “museum” tucked away in a corner of the arcade, which had displays of newspaper clippings with all manner of stories from the location. One was a rather macabre description of a chap found in the engine room after a hideous accident. We consider too much information is sometimes forthcoming in the publications we read today but I had never seen anything like this. It seemed to be more appropriate for a pathologist’s report.

This particular arcade is Adelaide’s version of the Victoria Arcade in Sydney, but in a more modest manner and is worth a visit if only to be reminded how shops of time past contrast with the brassier fashions of modern malls. (Chris and I were both shocked to see a shop with its name plate in bold large letters in Rundle Street – “FCUK”. We agreed we would not patronise it even if we were interested in the fashions for sale there.)

The afternoon got away on us and we realised that we did not have enough time to do justice to either the museum or art gallery so decided to call it a day and head home. We caught the 3 o’clock train, one minute before Chris’s free fares for the day ended and travelled back to Glenalta for $2.90.

This morning, I suggested that Chris may like to watch some of the cricket test since he had missed all of the first day’s innings yesterday. There was no argument there, so it was agreed we would pop up to the nearest large shopping mall, seek out a cheapy shop for a tool to fix the leak that had sprung up under the sink, buy fresh bread for lunch and then spend the rest of the day playing armchair cricket.

After consulting with the park office here, we set out for the Westfield Centre at Marion, about eleven kilometres west. We wound through the village of Blackwood, where we filled the empty fuel tanks, noted the three supermarkets for future reference, and descended along a ridge to suburbia. This shopping centre is certainly huge, and even in the two hours or so we were there, we did not walk every wing and every floor. We did however purchase some sandals for me, an adjustable spanner, some Vietnamese rolls for lunch, some box sets of CDs  and new spectacles for Chris.

We noticed a sign outside Big W advertising eye tests and glasses at an excellent price. Chris has not been happy with his glasses for some time so we decided it was a good opportunity to deal with the matter once and for all (well, at least for the next couple of years). So the test was done and the glasses duly ordered in the hope that they will arrive for collection within the next couple of weeks, which does now give us some sort of surety as far as the time we are to stay here in Adelaide.

We were back at camp in time for a late lunch and to pick up the second innings. Being such a good multi-tasker, he was able to fix the leaking pipe while keeping attune with the game. While I was writing this up, the water hose from the camp tap to the van burst again (it had burst in our absence yesterday) but this time, there was not enough length to chop and join as he had done last night. We were back up to Blackwood, found the hardware shop and exercised the plastic yet again. We now have a longer stronger hose that should have a longer life than its cheaper predecessor had.

The bolognaise sauce is simmering away in the crock pot, and the umpires are debating the level of light for continuing the game. We will try to contact Larissa later, having learned through the wonders of Facebook that our grandson is again in the wars and to spend the first part of the summer in plaster.