Adelaide City

Croissants for breakfast.  I missed out on getting them for Christmas, so it was nice having them today.

Once we organised ourselves, we drove into the city of Adelaide.  It has an amazing set out, circled by a park, and the streets set out in a grid.  Apparently the city was designed by the same man who set out Christchurch in New Zealand, Col. Light.  Parking about 3km from the centre was easy because it was a low key work week.  There are lots of old buildings and houses.  Beautiful. (I don’t like to say it but I think the original town planning was a lot better than Brisbane’s – Grant)

We walked along through the park around the city, stopping in at the Japanese garden built there, a gift from their sister city Himeji.  Japanese gardens are always neat, ordered and peaceful.  There were enormous  goldfish swimming in the pond under the lilly pads.  It was a very calm and cool spot in amongst the dry heat of the day.

We caught the tram the last part of the way.  It was an electric tram just like we used to ride in Germany 12 years ago.  Sitting in the air-conditioning was bliss.

  

We visited the museum and saw lots of preserved animals. Katie was fascinated by the parasites, one of which bit the tongue out of it's host fish, attached itself to the stump of the tongue, then waited for first bite of anything that came in the fish's mouth. Ugh.

There was a big bottle of round worms that were taken out of a human's stomach. Disgusting.

A giant squid display took up three floors of one of their elevators.  On the top floor was a glass panel through which you could view the whole squid hanging down to the ground, but Cooper wouldn't let anyone stand on that because it might break.

A baby porcupine is called a puggle.  It grows in a temporary pouch but is kicked out when it starts to grow spikes...

We looked at the display on the Mawson expedition to map the unexplored part of Antarctica below South Australia.  As part of the expedition, Sir Douglas Mawson led a sled party with two other guys, to the far east of their main base, and during their trek, the other two died.  One fell down a crevasse with a full sled of supplies and the strongest dogs, and the other, Mertz, died in a delerium after he and Mawson ate the remaining sled dogs to survive.  I understand that Mertz was a vegetarian and found the dog meat very tough, so he ate more of the liver, which gave him vitamin A poisoning.  It was an incredible feat of survival for Mawson to make it back to base camp alone.

(Dominic and I really enjoyed a closeup look at a current space suit.  Adelaide born Andy Thomas used it on his 1998 Mir Space Station Visit.  It looks like it would cost a fortune and looks like it provides far greater movement than the earlier space suits – Grant)

Cooper managed to pee on one of the museum chairs while he was engrossed in an interactive computer screen.  I cleaned it up as best I could...I probably should have told a security guard roaming that floor, but I was too scared.   We just beat a hasty retreat.

 

It was very hot today.  By the time we all walked through the mall, caught the tram back to near our car, then walked the long three blocks to the parking spot we were had it.

We didn't have the time or the energy to visit any of the beaches on the other side of Adelaide, but never mind.

Back to the van, more showers (oh, we just love these hot showers!) and late to bed.
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Vicki