We had a good last night in Melbourne. We went to a restaurant in China Town and then walked around with several hundred thousand of our friends (it was sooooo crowded with people just milling around the closed-off streets) to enjoy White Night. There were a multitude of venues for film, bands, the symphony (which we were going to attend, but as we had had a thundershower, we decided to skip so as to not sit in the wet grass) and light shows. The highlight for me was the huge display of giant lotus flowers on the river - magnificent (see pic). There were fireworks later on, but we were at the hotel and in bed so could only hear them. Apparently, the festival went on all night as one of our group met someone as she was going to breakfast and that someone was just coming back to the hotel from the festival at 7 AM!
This morning we got on a plane to Adelaide (a smaller city of 1.3 million with the feel of a large town as it is surrounded by green spaces and parks). I sat next to a young lady, Dominique, who was a PR person for Haigh's Chocolates - we hope to go on a factory tour in Adelaide. Her father owns a vineyard and produces three local labeled wines. We were driven straight to Cleland Wildlife Park in time for lunch in their cafe and then we were free to roam the grounds and get up close and personal with the kangaroos, including one with a joey in the pouch. We also saw echidnas (spiny anteaters), potoroos (small marsupials), wallabies, wombats, a Tasmanian devil, koalas, dingos, kookaburras, and rainbow lorikeets. It was an excellent day! We had a city tour on the way back to our hotel, which is right in the city, but next door to the red light district. The view from our room is the rear entrance to a gent's club and a peep show. We had time for a wash up and a change of clothes and then went to our home hosted dinner. Our hosts were Rosie and Dave who live in an 1880 slate house. It was quite lovely and so were our hosts. Dave had been an accountant and then they ran a cafe in a technology park. Rosie later worked in a book shop. They have two children and five grandchildren. Their daughter lives in Sydney and their son teaches at an English language school in Thailand. We had a lovely time. The temperature today was 110, but it was a dry heat and not too bad. It did stay hot in the evening so I was glad that we had dinner in their air conditioned house instead of on the patio.
The internet here is very slow so I may have to wait until later to post the pictures for the day.
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