Our first day in Adelaide just so happened to be my 24th birthday and I was excited to be celebrating it in a new place. Adelaide is quite different from Perth: a bit grungier, smaller, and tighter packed but easy to navigate and completely surrounded by beautiful parklands and green space. It is the capital of South Australia, which is apparently the only state in Australia established by non-convict, free immigrants (Aussies from SA love to point that out). They have every right to be proud of their state - founded on the promise of civil liberties and freedom from religious persecution, SA has come to be the most progressive of the Australian states. For instance, SA supermarkets won't bag your groceries unless you bring your own bags or buy heavy duty, reusable ones from them. Imagine how much plastic bag waste could be prevented by a policy like that in the US. Rundle Mall It was easy to see that Christmas mania had descended upon Adelaide - I think it was the 50 ft tall, fiberglass Santa that initially tipped us off. Having grown up on the east coast, it was super strange seeing Christmas decorations and hearing a nearby brass band playing "Good King Wenceslas" in 80+ degrees Fahrenheit Australia. We grabbed some tasty noodles for a nice lunch in the park, then set out to find a place to stay for the next few days. After setting up camp at a caravan park just outside of town, we ventured back into Adelaide for a rare night of metropolitan festivity and exploration. Our first stop was Adelaide’s famous Central Market: a huge indoor labyrinth of stalls selling local produce, bread, cheese, coffee, and gourmet specialty items. We only had one hour to explore before it closed and barely scratched the surface of this enormous event. The vibrant colors and delectable smells were enough to make you feel that you had reached a type of nirvana. The fruit stalls in particular reminded us of how far we were from home and how close we were to Asia, selling rambutan, lychee, jackfruit, and other fabulous Asian delights. We bought a few marinated Greek olives to munch as we wandered. All the while I kept thinking about how my late Grandma Julie, a true gourmet and a feisty proponent of all things delicious, would have loved this place. It was “Food of the gods!” as she would so often say. If there’s one thing to be said about Australian cities, it’s that there is never a shortage of places to eat. Urban Australians love to eat out, so even though there are 500 restaurants packed into one city, they never seem to be short on business. This competition greatly benefited our options for dinner, but did not help our indecisiveness. We wandered up and down the Asian restaurant district across from Central Market for what seemed like an hour until we settled on a Malaysian restaurant. After a delightful seafood lakhsa and a plate of wok-fried sweet chili squid, we wandered the hoppin’ streets of Adelaide for a nightcap. Tucked between the gaudy nightclubs filled with plastered backpackers we found an awesome little place on Hindley St called Apothecary 1878. This place was a pharmacy in the 19th century and is now a chic, multi-level wine and cocktail bar, complete with old-timey medicine bottles for decoration. As we browsed their incredibly extensive drink menu we noticed that they even offered six different kinds of absinthe at various levels of potency. Tres cool. It was a lovely place to spend the end of a great evening - enjoying a few final sips of cultural luxury before having to revert back to our ramen and canned spaghetti standard. Before departing Adelaide for some much needed employment, we did a bit more exploring in this very socially progressive Aussie city. Along North Terrace are several free museums nestled among the University of Adelaide’s campus. One, a natural history museum, had a beautiful, extensive exhibit on Aboriginal culture as well as a few others on local paleontology, flora and fauna, and historical Antarctic expeditions. Another museum, the Immigration Museum, had an interactive exhibit on the “White Australia Policy,” various immigration policies designed to keep Australia primarily white and British, which started at the turn of the century and continued until as recently as 1973. The exhibit was designed to put you in the shoes of a non-British immigrant trying to enter the country and whether or not you would make the cut. The requirements for them to enter were ludicrous. An immigrant from Italy, for instance, might be given a dictation exam in Norwegian, and would be summarily deported if they failed. There were also policies relating to Aboriginals that were designed with the deliberate intention of preventing them from reproducing. For many years, it was illegal for two full-blood aboriginals to marry in some parts of Australia. It was an enlightening exhibit, but disturbing that policies such as these were allowed to happen, let alone go on for as long as they did. If you ever find yourself in Adelaide, you should also check out a place called Elephant Walk. This awesome late-night establishment is incredibly tiny, but has cozy sofa nooks separated by bamboo screens and serves delicious coffees and deserts. It only opens after 8pm so it’s a great place to go late and have a Viennese coffee and some sticky date pudding. We would also highly recommend the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, a beautiful place for a walk where we found the Museum of Economic Botany. Yes, we know that is possibly the most boring name for a museum ever, but it was actually a really fascinating display of the myriad uses of plants and produce. Okay, still a bit geeky, but really interesting stuff!
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From Mount Isa we began the somewhat daunting task of driving the long, dry expanse of nothingness that is the Northern Territory up towards Darwin. Since the only people we had met that had made this journey so far were road train drivers, we had no idea what to expect, but our Camps 5 book did show a few roadside camping areas where we could stay overnight. Just before the border, one camping area had some dirt tracks that extended back into the bush and we took this opportunity to become a bit more isolated out in the wilderness. The sunset that night was beautiful; the bugs however, were out in force. The next day we found ourselves crossing over from Queensland into the Northern Territory! A friendly biker dude kindly took our picture to document this occasion. We camped that night at another rest stop along the Barkly Highway, which our book recommended as a good site. We were disappointed to discover, however, that this site consisted of rocky ground, nasty black flies, a rusty broken windmill, no bathrooms, and no potable drinking water. As there was really nowhere else to go, we made do. That night while cooking mini pizzas over a wood fire, we met Terry and Trish from Gladstone who had camped out right next to the only fire pit and picnic table in the whole area. Terry was the gruff, rough n’ tumble type - a retired truck driver originally from Victoria - and Trish, from Queensland, was a bit loud and screechy. The evening began with small talk and recommendations for the NT and WA, and progressed into a crazy night of stories and politics we never could’ve anticipated. To give some samples: Terry began his storytelling with tales from his youth on a farm, where he was continually experimenting with devices to aid in chicken killing and plucking. Terry was also missing a few toes on his left foot. One day, his niece asked him how he lost his toes. He explained that the cat had eaten them. Immediately, his niece walked across the room and proceeded to “kick the shit out of the cat, yelling, ‘Give Uncle Terry his toes back!’” Another time, Trish took him into Brisbane to a fancy casino. As the valet jumped into his car to park it, Terry grabbed the poor guy, dragging him out by his neck screaming, “Why the hell are you stealing my car?” After Trish explained what a valet was, Terry then ran after the bellhop for stealing his luggage. These stories and the manner in which he told them had us all in stitches. As he put it, you can tell a real Aussie by his ability to “spin a good yarn.” Trish, from the sidelines, kept yelling, “People shouldn’t know you Terry.” Devin and his double pot oven invention... and Trish's boobs, and drink. After what seemed like only a few drinks, we realized Trish was suddenly and inexplicably hammered - so inebriated that she needed to hold onto the canopy pole for balance. As an afterthought, Devin put a small branch of spinifex, a nasty, dry, spiky weed, into the fire, which immediately exploded and blew smoke and sparks right into Trish’s face. This should not have been much of an issue, had she been consciously able to let go of the pole and move out of the smoke’s path. We tried our best not to burst out laughing when she started blindly yelling at Devin, “A bloke should be shot for doing something like that!” and “Punch him Terry, Terry punch him!” As friendly as these two were toward us (so much so that they wanted to exchange facebook info to keep in touch), the earlier part of the evening unfortunately included some sensitive political conversations that revealed very blunt racism on the part of Trish and Terry towards Aboriginals. Sparked by the topic of former PM Kevin Rudd’s powerful (and long overdue) public apology to the Stolen Generations, they very strongly voiced their opposition to that action, saying, “Why do we have to apologize?” When the word ‘genocide’ was mentioned regarding Australia’s dark and violent past towards Aboriginals, a string of angry self-righteous comments about respecting their land and taxes and property rights ensued. Uncomfortable, we tried to change topics and the evening eventually progressed as outlined above. This is not the first time we’ve experienced these opinions with otherwise charming Aussies and we guess it won’t be the last. It’s shocking to us, not because racism is less in the states (which is tragic), but because here in Australia it is so openly and self-righteously defended and seems among some to be the standard base of opinion. We shall see if this changes as we make our way further into parts of the country with more concentrated indigenous populations and tribal properties.
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Marielle & BenWe're two people in the midst of severe quarter-life crises who decided to leave good jobs in a bad economy to travel to the other side of the world because, well, why not? Archives
April 2011
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