Adelaide and Beyond

After the beautiful, bustle and weird and wonderful weather of Melbourne Adelaide was a lovely tonic. We were met at the train station by Rosie a wonderful teaching buddy from my stint in Adelaide in 1986!. It was as if the twenty-five years were nothing and we hugged and laughed as if we saw her last week.

She and her husband Mike were teaching during the week so Arne and I stayed in The Adabco Boutique Hotel (not sure about the boutique bit) and busied ourselves in and around the city as usual on buses and this time on bikes (free.) We rode on a hot and dusty day down by the River Torrens. Bikes with three gears gave us a good work out. We followed this with a nostalgic ride on the Obahn - a bus that turns itself into a train and whizzes on a narrow gauge track outside the city and up to the base of the Adelaide hills - a kind of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the modern years. Actually it had just been put into service when I was in Adelaide all those years ago. We should try it in Vancouver.

Down by the Torrens


We left the Obahn and took a long bus ride up into the hills to the Cleland Animal Reserve where it was sadly too hot to handle koalas - anything of 32 degrees and koalas can’t be held. Nonetheless they draped themselves so gracefully among the tree branches for us and languidly munched their eucalyptus leaves like roly poly Roman Emperors. We ate our lunch under the jaundiced eye of a kookaburra who looked as if the minute we left he would go off and join his friends for a good natter about tourists.

Too hot to be handled

If you’ve been to Victoria, BC you have a sense of Adelaide - with sun of course and gentle hills all around. They also have Mount Lofty - which isn’t.

It was in Adelaide when we began to get a real sense of how expensive it was to eat out in Australia. But the food is usually good and there’s no tipping so….
As the Australians say, “You’re right.” (said quickly and with a duck of the head)
It means variously, You/he/she/it
Is/ are alright,
or It’s OK, that was my fault,
or, Everything’s fine.
It’s a wonderful, catch-all phrase.

For the most part each day begins with coffee (more about that in a minute) a sweetie,(to eat that is) a drive to somewhere or something which is always interspersed with a picnic lunch for which we assiduously purchase a bottled of chilled sauv blanc (or something else that is white and cold), buns, cheese, sliced meats a carrot and a piece of fruit. Our picky nickys are the favourite part of the day. We have usually driven a distance and found a lovely spot - or not and a table, or not, and then a good nosh. Dinner out has been a bit hit or miss. When you don’t know the area, arrive late, read the guide book for guidance - well sometimes it just doesn’t work. But it rarely matters because lunch is always such a treat.

Coffee: As Canadians who love our drip coffee it has been a challenge to find just a cup ó joe. You can get - long flat black, short flat black, latte, macchiatos… the list is endless. But just a cup of plain, drip coffee - no go. Although Rosie like a true Italian did brew us some fine expresso - so grateful.

But we have found a way to get what we both want in our morning fix. Ask for long, flat black and then bring those little creamers from your hotel room and add them to the coffee which is really a big, strong expresso - success!

We were wined and dined royally by dear friends Angela and David. Their great kids Bonnie and Will actually hung around too while we went on a long and windy trip down memory lane. Some of us (and I won’t mention any names but her name begins with P and ends with e) really enjoyed the champers - until morning and the reckoning.

We spent the weekend with Rosie and Mike with a trip out to the Bourassa Valley (where some of those very drinkables wines come from) and a wine tour. We sipped and munched the afternoon away.

That evening there was a grand party in our honour and many old chums arrived. We laughed over very bad old pictures of ourselves as young teachers and some of us (not mentioning any names but his name starts with an A and ends with an e) really got into our cups and swept me around the kitchen to Stan Rogers singing “Forty five Years From Now.” Have you noticed a bit of a boozy trend here?!

We left Adelaide just as the sun was rising and had a too long and not too comfortable flight to Tasmania - we had to go back to Melbourne and then on to Hobart - no direct flights.

It was good to return to the heady days of my youth (well I was certainly younger) see good friends again and to revisit old haunts and some see some new ones. I always wanted to come back to dear, old Adelaide and thanks to good planning on AJ’s part I got my wish.

Actually out for dinner

PJ