Adelaide - City of Everything

Fresh from our four day sojourn to Adelaide, a place to which I haven't visited for about twenty years, I've rediscovered it's diversity. Truly a city of everything, so much to see and do, the first thing I noticed was the number of boutique coffee shops, and unlike Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane, all of them open, all them top quality and all of them serving pretty reasonable coffee.

The streets are wide, the traffic is minimal and the lifestyle is lazy, or certainly lazier than Sydney. The best attraction we found, apart from the fabulous wineries was Central Markets.

What an awesome place, open late on Friday nights, it is THE place to get all your fresh food.






and there is some strange stuff here. how about Crocodile meat, or Emu ?




Of course, they have the right idea about public transport, the Tram is FREE in the city, and it goes from the top of Adelaide city to the beach at Glenelg, for a measly $2.70.

The river Torrens crosses the city and is just beautiful, you could spend the day walking around the gardens then settle in for a nice picnic on the riverbank. or maybe even do a spot of fishing !


To finish off a great day out, a visit to one of the three major restaurant strips is mandatory, we found the ones in North Adelaide and in Hutt Street west of the city absolutely fantastic, so much better than anything I've experienced in Norton Street Sydney and Lygon Street Melbourne put together.









Life wouldn't be the same without a nice bottle or two or three of wine, would it ? We visited a few of the best wineries in SA, and at Penfolds we even got to make our own blend, Bin 138 ... Now THIS is living ! A new found respect for a great city.. Love it !

Cherry Tree Hill

Another childhood memory - this place is a real treasure, literally, and I'm not going to say exactly where it is. In the 50's and 60's it was a hive of activity, the place to be on a Sunday afternoon, parents would pack the picnic baskets and bundle the kids in the car for a trip to Cherry Tree Hill, near Kurrajong in NSW. There was a playground with a maypole, a swing set, a see-saw and a slippery dip, there was a shop that sold icy boys and redskins and chips, and there was a couple of lookout posts on the ridge with binoculars on them so we could see far off into the distance.
It was a kids playground, and a parents meeting point.
Now, sadly, it's all abandoned, all that remains is overgrown grass, no binoculars, a rusty maypole and remains of the swings set and see-saw.
We did manage to find some old coins on the ground though, reminders of the heady days, with my trusty metal detector, and 20 minutes searching I managed to find a 1938 penny, evidence of a past flourishing time.. ahh, the memories...

The biggest hill in the world !

In the 1960's, we thought this was the biggest hill in the world .. we called it Roly Poly Hill.. and those of you who were brought up in Ryde, Sydney NSW, would know it very well. We would ride our billy carts down Roly Poly hoping to get to the fastest speed on the planet, not caring for our knees, our elbows or even our lives.
By the late 60's we'd progressed to push bikes, and even faster speeds, funny, I never remember riding up Roly Poly hill !
This is how it looks now, in 2009, still steep, but not that bad, of course I'm quite a bit taller now than I was back then..

Beware of Chickens

As you travel the great expanse of Australia you will see many warning signs, Kangaroos, Koalas, Wombats, maybe even Wild Pigs, but the only place you have to Beware of Chickens is in Wisemans Ferry, near Sydney NSW.
Danger ! They peck your tyres !
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The Top End

Do I really need to be told ? I traveled for 12 days to get there, I read it on the map every day while on the way, I sweated blood coaxing the 4WD up the slippery mud roads past the Daintree, and I avoided crocodiles while wading the river crossings to check the depth.. I knew I wasn't going to Tasmania !

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The Corrugated Plane

Q.Imagine having a plane crash in your back yard - what would you do ?
A. Turn it into a shelter for the horses.. Of course you have to waterproof the nosecone with good old Aussie corrugated iron...
Where is it ? On the way to Brisbane - where else..

Little Bottler !

Who doesn't want a young girl in a bottle ? I was stunned to see this sign outside a store in Stanthorpe, Queensland, so I ventured inside to check it out.
Apparently they pickle them too ! Weird !
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William Lawson House - Macquarie.

William Lawson was one of Australia's most famous explorers, a third of the party of Blaxland, Lawson & Wentworth who traversed over the Blue Mountains for the first time in the early 1800's.
This is his 'country house' at Bathurst in NSW, built around 1835, an awesome place, with 1000 acres of land, still working as a sheep farm today.
A real Rare Australian Place, with some great country, we were privileged to tour the property late in 2008, including the underground cellars and onsite convict prison.
The legend of 'Macquarie' is that Lawson himself once flogged a convict to death out the front on the 'flogging tree'.
Needless to say, we weren't able to find any evidence of that, but the tree is definately there.
The view from the back of the property looking toward the house is spectacular, overlooking the Bathurst valley.

Thorntons Scent Bottle

Visitors to Sydney will have no doubt driven or walked right past one of the City’s most innovative objects without even realising it.
Right there on Elizabeth Street, at the junction of Bathurst Street lays a tall structure known as "The Hyde Park Obelisk."
To the passer by this tall spire is of little interest and indeed to the avid traveller who may have seen a similar structure in Paris, London or New York it would seem no different.
However this sandstone monument hides a secret that literally reeks with Australian pride.
Erected in 1857 by then Sydney Mayor George Thornton, and modelled on the famous Cleopatra's Needle of ancient Egypt, with a beautiful sandstone base and fine-filigreed bronze pyramid at the top, it was known in earlier times as Thornton’s Scent Bottle.
For you see, it was built over the top of Sydney’s main sewer line, to be used as a vent to eliminate noxious gases.
Paris, London and New York all have Obelisks that were presented to each city by Egypt, but Australia has the only one that is on top of a sewer, surely a testament to the ingenuity of a fast growing colony in the antipodes.
It was the very first sewer vent in the Sydney sewerage system and the only one made of sandstone.
The system, then known as Bennelong Sewerage Works, was a combined waste water and stormwater system, which drained to an outlet at Bennelong Point where the Sydney Opera House now stands.
In the late 1880's the Bondi Ocean Outfall was built, and all dry weather flow was diverted to the Bondi Treatment Plant, but wet weather flow was still into the harbour via Bennelong Point.
The Hyde Park Obelisk was integral in stopping gas build up in the underground sewer and in fact one account from around 1894 suggested the following:
"The Obelisk causes a splendid draft in Pitt-street sewer - the foreman reports it is difficult to keep a candle alight when working in same. The work done by the small staff is considerable (the staff consisting of a plumber and a youth."

Last Man Standing...

What's this ?

Sydney's only remaining outside toilet.. Gentlemen only of course, in Colonial times, women were forbidden from using amenities in the city, only the men could sneak behind one of these strategically located 'curved walls'.. this one is on Fort Street, right under the Harbour Bridge..