What is it with Antipodeans and their urge to fling themselves off high places? Don’t expect any bungee jumping action shots from me on my upcoming trip to New Zealand, either. Glenelg is one of Adelaide’s beach suburbs, very busy today but it does have great sand so one can see why. Last day in South Australia, back to Brisbane – briefly – tomorrow.
Hard to resist the temptation to stick another ‘Flora/Fauna’ post up today but I have done so, purely for a change of theme. Mind you, to classify this as an ‘Urban Scene’ is pushing it. Penneshaw reminds me of the West Coast of Scotland, beautiful and remote; surprisingly so, in fact. This pump, powered by the wind, served as the town’s mains water supply until as late as 1965, and mains electricity did not come to Kangaroo Island until 1975. It’s a great spot and at several points over the last four days I have been quite seriously planning my move here: but now it’s time to go back to what is often termed ‘civilisation’, though I have my doubts. I leave on tomorrow morning’s ferry.
Every place has sea, and rocks, and sky, and even if these may be more of themselves in Australia, they are still basically familiar. What I like is the unfamiliarity of the flora and fauna, its basic difference – like the ubiquity of these eucalyptus trees, and their amazing skeins of bark and the leaves that when you rub them between your fingers smell like Vicks’ Vapo-Rub. This tree grows in the garden of the Penneshaw YHA, where I spent all the day working, and all I had to do to get this shot was just point the camera upwards.
Toured Kangaroo Island today and saw plenty of interesting creatures both in the wild and in sanctuaries of one kind or another, including kangaroos, koalas, goannas, seals, wombats and more. Good landscapes too, but as I did a landscape yesterday, the wildlife theme is more appealing – and this emu wins because I love its deep red eye sitting in its otherwise bland plumage like a jewel. Vicious-looking thing however – was glad it was behind a fence.
A thoroughly prosaic name for a very beautiful spot. Penneshaw is a little town (population 1,500) at the point where the ferry arrives on Kangaroo Island from the mainland – which can be seen in the very far distance of this shot, this being the tip of the Fleurieu Peninsula, south of Adelaide.
When I arranged to have my sabbatical here in Australia, and spend the first part of it travelling while I started on my book, this is pretty much the kind of place where I pictured myself. I’m here until Saturday. This is good news.
A fairly normal Monday of work for me, not at all eventful or particularly uplifting, but at least the office space was more attractive and al fresco than it could have been.
Well, I’m sure it’s very spiritually fulfilling to spend February Sundays all huddled up around a good fire but this year, frankly, give me this kind of thing. This is the stairway down to the beautiful – and mostly empty – South Port beach, at the mouth of the Onkaparinga river just south of Adelaide. Visited the vineyards of the McLaren Vale today and then drove back (or was driven back, by my excellent hostess Caroline) along the side of the Southern Ocean, and enjoyed the whole thing.
Translocated myself (via Qantas) to Adelaide this morning. My original plans were to spend this week checking out the Queensland coast but Cyclone Oswald put paid to that, so here I am in South Australia instead. It feels very different – not sub-tropical like Brisbane is, but more Mediterranean, much less humid, and with these big wide boulevards and low-key, but attractive, architecture. But then again it was a 3-hour flight, and a 3-hour flight from Manchester gets me to (say) Corfu, so I suppose it’s no surprise that the environment has altered somewhat.
More evidence of this – we are back with pigeons (as opposed to ibises) as the bird-pest of choice. This huge flock of them were wheeling on and off the cornices of the South Australia Museum this afternoon, as I came out, having done the tourist bit.
This massive, interactive display – 30 feet (9m) high at least – resides in the foyer of the brand new Science and Technology block at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). OK, it has nothing to do with business process analysis, or whatever – so is essentially trivial – but it gets a lot more interest, from all sorts of people.
This is an exhibit by (if I remember rightly) Tiffany Chung – who has cast literally thousands of little glass animals and arranged them in this twenty-foot long swirl. There were lots of interesting pieces in this place today, for the ‘APT7’ (Asia-Pacific Triennale) exhibition. I was more into taking photos of the visitors, though.
Being 42 