34:56.050 S   138:36.332 E

11^th- 20^th August 2007

ADELAIDE – SOUTH AUSTRALIA

This is the view from the plane, over the centre of Australia, the iron red so distinctive, the blue is not water, just old river beds, and the white is salt from the sea which evaporated!

We flew half-way across Australia from the Northeastern Top end down to the Southern Coastal area, almost a third of the way along from the far S.E. corner, where our good sailing friends Rob and Suzanne live.  We originally met them in the Mediterranean in September 1997, 10 years ago in Gibraltar, just before their leap across the Atlantic, where sadly they were dismated in their yacht Caviar, just 500 miles before reaching Antigua!  Rob managed to jury rig a sail in order to help them limp into English Harbour, where me met up with them again.  Rob also helped David rescue our friend’s boat, Tahiri in the middle of the Pacific, and sail her back to Bora Bora to windward.  But that’s another story.

Rob and Suzanne Gale’s welcome round their log fire is just what we needed changing from the tropical climate of Cairns to Springtime in South Australia.  They invited us to join them for a week to visit the Flinders Range, North of Adelaide, and Visit some of the best Australian wineries in the Claire and Barrossa Valleys, which we knew were good, but had not visited on our previous visit to them in April 2006.

Suzanne’s Grandmother’s house, extensively refurbished

By Rob and Suzanne, which was built in 1901 is a classic

style of its era.  It was the only house in the street,

Now surrounded by suburbia!

The Torrens River lake formed by damming the River

Suzanne wondered why they cannot save all this water to help Adelaide with their serious water shortage, rather than just let it flow out to sea!

Adelaide’s Government House surrounded by the modern buildings

Population of 1,050,800, 80% of whom live in Adelaide.

Not quite the pyramid, but modern solar panels look

Attractive like leaves blowing in the wind at Adelaide’s Festival Centre

St Peter’s Cathedral built in 1869

The Gothic style University of Adelaide founded in 1874 with grants made from the profits of copper mining.  This is where Rob and Suzanne first met whilst doing their Science Degrees

in 1967

Lloyd House, where Rob had his lodgings close to the City Centre of Adelaide whilst at University is

now a private house.   Rob had a reunion of all the ‘inmates’ of this house last year, which David and I participated in, as we were visiting them on ANZAC day, the day of the party which happened to be Valerie’s Birthday.

Yes, we did get some warm weather, Dean and Pat, good friends of Rob and Suzanne’s also made us welcome at their lovely coastal home along the Hallet Cove Walk.  Adelaide City is in the background, just 10 minutes away by car.

The 2 hour Hallet Cove coastal walk was

Enhanced by watching the sea-lions frolicking close in to shore

This geological formation looks like the underside of a mushroom!

Austrlia is an Artist’s haven, demonstrated here by

Silvio Apponyi himself, the famous Australian sculpture who is

Constantly making something (there was a lovely wooden frog in the making in his pocket during the exhibition at the David Drisdale Gallery in McLaren Vale!

Here he is explaining the enormous process involved in making these gorgeous fairy penguins in bronze, and getting the three of them together in one piece.

These two seals are the epitome of grace and sensitivity, beautifully captured here  by Silvio in this bronze sculpture.  This is always the way I visualize these delightful animals, having swum with them in the Galapagos Islands.

This is a leafy sea-dragon, made out of copper, the mineral on which Adelaide has thrived. The artist, David Hamilton has captured this tiny animal which lives amongst the fronds of sea-weed off the coasts of the Southern coastline of Australia.  It seems to be weightless, hanging in space, just as it should do, when living in the sea.