March 10th - Adelaide

First, I wanted to give a medical update on the passenger who needed blood at 2AM the other night.  As I wrote earlier, the Captain came on the speaker and asked for donors with a specific blood type.  I’m happy to report that 10 passengers went down to the medical center in the wee hours of the morning to donate.  The doctors on board were able to stabilize the patient and she was transported to the hospital in Melbourne the next morning.  She’s doing much better now.

Adelaide was named for King William IV’s wife, Queen Adelaide.  William was king when the city was founded in 1835.  It was settled by free settlers, not convicts and was one of the first planned cities in the world.  The city is laid out in a grid street fashion with a treed green space all around the perimeter.  As the bus driver told us this morning, you can’t get lost, if you run into some trees just turn around.

Adelaide is the capital of the state of Southern Australia, total population about 1.3 million.  Most of those people live in the Adelaide metro area with a few other large towns nearby.  The state is mostly desert and not widely inhabited. [In a previous post I said Melbourne was the capital of Southern Australia, it’s not. Melbourne is the capital of the state of Victoria.  I tried to correct it but it didn’t take]

Our time in the city was limited as the last shuttle to the ship left the downtown area at 3PM.  All aboard was 4:30PM.  Fred and I were on the 1^st or 2^nd shuttle to leave this morning at about 8:40 AM, it took 50 minutes to get into the city from the port.  The port isn’t that far from the ship but morning traffic was stop and go and we hit every light.  There were no highways in sight, we traveled on city streets the whole way.

As we’ve found with all the Australian cities we’ve been to, everyone is very friendly and willing to help you with any questions.  I had contacted the local tourist bureau some time ago and asked for a tour by one of their volunteer ‘greeters’.  We’ve used a service like this before, in Wellington New Zealand and Bath England.  The tour is given by a volunteer who loves their city and is anxious to show it off.  Just like our other two experiences, this one was great.

Our guide today was Stan, an American from Nebraska who came to Australia to teach 51 years ago and never left.  He became a citizen in the early 1990’s.  We were able to ask him a lot of questions about Australia.  For example, the police are all state police, so there is no such thing is the Adelaide Police, just the Southern Australia police and the same is true all over the country.  Primary school (what we call elementary) is grades 1-7 and then you go to high school.  Most colleges are state sponsored although the country does have a few private ones.  Tuition isn’t too bad for Australians but not real cheap either.  They make most of their money charging Chinese and Japanese students a lot to get in.

There is universal health care but some people will also have private health insurance.  The state sponsored health care will take care of all your needs, accept drugs and those are regulated so the cost isn’t too bad.  The only draw back to the universal health care is that you might have to wait for elective surgery for example, however emergencies are taken care of right away and there is still no charge.  Stan is over 65 and does have a private policy, he pays $1500 AUS a year for it, that’s less then $1000 USD.  That’s cheap!

Stan also confirmed what we heard about tipping…you don’t do it here in Australia.  He said sure, if someone really does something above and beyond for you a tip is nice but otherwise no tipping.  That’s surprisingly tough for Americans…although we could get used to it.

So, to the tour…Adelaide doesn’t have a lot of big sites but it is a nice city.  We saw the theater located in the town hall, the riverside and some art in the park on the tour.  We also stood on the balcony where in 1963 the Beatles, on their first world tour, greeted over 300,000 screaming fans.

Later, we went inside one of the most picturesque libraries we’ve ever seen.  It looks like it could have come from one of the Harry Potter books.

Like Sydney and Melbourne, the city has preserved its old Victorian buildings and made them into shopping areas.  As with the other two cities the shops were on the quirky side.  The shop below sells nothing but buttons, thousands and thousands of buttons.

When we were in Melbourne the other day there were a lot of festivals going on to mark the end of summer, same here in Adelaide but most of the fun starts at night.  We did however come across this doll house on a pedestrian shopping strip.  We could have gone inside…but didn’t.  You can see the little girl sitting on the toilet in one room and there are others in the attic bedroom.  This exhibit was part of the ‘fringe’ festival.  It allows anyone to submit art or something like art to be displayed.  Stan told us some of it was successful, some not so much.

We concluded our tour at the Adelaide Central Market.  Like the one we saw in Melbourne, this one had everything from fruit to fish to clothes.  We parted ways with Stan here and had a quick lunch before making our way back to the shuttle.  We’ve found the shuttle drivers here in Australia to be a chatty lot and our driver this time was no different.  He provided some fun commentary along the way and detoured us on the way back so we could see the fantastic beach they have here and the fabulous homes along the way.  No pictures unfortunately, we were traveling way to fast.

We are at sea for two days and then we’ll be in Busselton Australia.  This will be a tender port and it’s three miles into shore, let’s hope for calm seas!