RTW Day 56 - Adelaide

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We round off our Australian trip with a couple of days in Adelaide. It’s only an hour’s drive from Nuriootpa so we arrive with plenty of time for sightseeing. Awkward moment in the car park when I get into the wrong car, exacerbated by the fact I then start rearranging things in said car.

We start with the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. It’s more informally planted than the other antipodean gardens we have seen. My favourite part is the succulent garden, full of giant cacti. Here I encounter a group of school children competing to see who can get the most cactus spikes in their hands. I wonder if that features in the risk assessment?

Next door is the National Wine Centre. This combines a wine museum with a vending machine style tasting room. It’s a tad expensive but obviously popular. I haven’t seen so many ATMs in one room since Las Vegas.

After a picnic in the gardens, we head along North Terrace, home to the Art Gallery of South Australia. Basically, 3 floors of seriously weird stuff. Even the old man, who usually moans about contemporary art, is mesmerised by its weirdness. Weirdest of all: ‘We are all flesh’ a dead horse strung up by its hoof.

We round off our day with the South Australian Museum; somewhat disappointing as it’s pretty much 3 floors of taxidermy. Tucked in a corner, however, its redeeming feature – ‘Milerum and and Me: The Art of Jacob Stengl’ some great paintings by an Aboriginal artist taken from his family aged 3 and raised in a children’s home.

That’s enough culture for the old man for one day, so we check into our motel. It’s “a unique self rated 3 star accommodation option”. In other words, rather tired and no one else would give it 3 stars. Good job we have yesterday’s purchase from Jacobs Creek, a very nice sparkling Chardonnay.

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