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Published: October 9th 2018
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Reflecting on where you were a couple of weeks ago is good for the soul as you travel ....I look back at the photos and my notes and experience the hospitality, friendships ,food , city scapes and landscapes all over again!
Tucked away in narrow country lanes lined with tall firs and eucalyptus trees we approached my “home from home” in the the Adelaide Hills through banks of camellias. Sue and Bryan , my hosts were Home exchange partners and they made me very welcome including Me in their daily life. So it was off to Adelaide city as it was Market day ...what a fabulous market from fruit and veg, flowers and coffee to cannoli and cheeses.... everything you could ask for and always so colourful. Adelaide felt like a small enough city centre to walk about and if you were tired there were free trams to transport. Then with instructions about bus stops how to get back home to Aldgate I set off for the South Australia Museum and was thrilled to see the very very ancient fossils from a period in geological time now called Ediacaran 542-635 Million year ago : these were some of the earliest
Chinatown
Great little cheap eats here. forms of life found in Flinders Range SA. I had read a paper about this some time ago so it was great to see these fossils in the rocks. The museum also had a very interesting exhibition about Aboriginal life with fabulous artefacts and Explanations about the way of life which sustained these peoples over 50/40,000 years living in the harsh environment of Australia . Top marks for the SA Museum.
Around the University area were some lovely old buildings and nearby was the SA Art Gallery and Botanic Gardens ... our Victorian ancestors knew how to lay the foundations of a city and include green spaces ! With special exhibition at the Art Gallery about an artist who uses string as a medium it gave an additional meaning to the phrases “ how long is a piece of string” and “ Tying yourself up in knots”! But what looked like a dead horse hanging from the ceiling did not tick a box for me , however the silver egg shape outside the building captured reflections and that came up cleverly on my photo.
Sue invited me to join her on a morning ramble at Mount Lofty ,
you will guess from the name it’s quite high up there and our little group set off down paths through pine groves and down deep ravines . All the while I was thinking we are going down , so eventually we will have to come back up and of course we did Huffing and puffing a little bit !! However it was most enjoyable and a beautiful place to ramble.
I must admit the weather was a bit more chilly than I thought it would be.... anyone who thinks Australia is hot and sunny all the time better check up where and when they’re will be there. However my wardrobe consists of clothes for all weather possibilities... the shorts, swimsuit and sundress have never seen the light of day.... I have mostly been living out of my small hold-all as the clothes and stuff I don’t need day to day stay in the suitcase.
But at last a sunny day arrived and my hosts whizzed me off through the beautiful Adelaide Hills , down McLaren Vale to the seaside at Willunga ; we had picked up some famous Aussie pies and so first it was a picnic on
the cliff tops and then down to the beach to walk, sit in the sun and even to paddle !!!! There always seems to be a shipwreck somewhere along this coast with treacherous reefs and there it was timbers lying in the sand. Sharks too here , not that I saw any and didn’t go in further than my ankles , but Suemknew of someone who had been taken by a shark on a reef just offshore . On the way back home there was a visit to a winery and tasting and sitting in the sun admiring the patterns the vines make on the hillsides.
On our last evening together we ventured to the local Japanese restaurant, I am not too familiar with Japanese food so let Sue be my guide and everything we had was most delicious.
Altogether in these few days I felt I had a very enjoyable experience of Adelaide and it’s beautiful Hills and Vales.
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Home exchange
Glad you are visiting Adelaide with locals. I'm sure they enjoyed your home and area also. Looks fantastic. We stopped in Adelaide when we took the train from Sydney to Perth. We thought if we went back we'd like more time there.