Day 54: 20231116 Thursday, November 16, 2023- Adelaide, South Australia
The ship came into Adelaide and did a parallel parking maneuver right in front of a car carrier. Watching the approach from the balcony was a bit disconcerting because it is hard to judge the distance to the end of the boat, and the car carrier sure looked like it was very close by. We had breakfast delivered again since our excursion met at 8am.
Our Adelaide excursion took us up to the Cleland Wildlife Park situated on Mt. Lofty, which overlooks the Adelaide area. The weather turned out to be perfect for walking around the zoo with temperatures around 70˚F and with a light breeze. We brought light coats which worked great. This wildlife park has large areas that are fenced in acreage in which kangaroos, wallabies, and even emus can wander freely. There are paved pathways connecting all areas of the zoo, but you are free to wander through any of the acreage to interact with the animals, aside from some roped off areas for animals to rest if they’re tired of interacting with visitors. Some animals are a bit more skittish than others, but there was no shortage of kangaroos and wallabies that didn’t mind people coming up to feed and pet them. They did sell packets of kangaroo feed for $4 at the main gate. Within some of these paddocks are more conventional exhibits for animals that need more protection and shelter such as the wombats, reptiles, echidnas and Tasmanian devil. There are also a couple of aviaries where you can enter and get close to the birds.
They did have a Koala close encounter where you could pet a koala, and for an additional charge during certain times, you can actually hold one for pictures. We did get a much better look at a wombat at this zoo because one of them was out in his enclosure and wandering about. He didn’t seem too shy about people, and the enclosure had pretty short walls, so you could actually pet the wombat if you wanted to. It really reminded us of a pig, or at least the marsupial equivalent. They are kind of chunky, and both cute and ugly at the same time.
The echidnas were very active at this zoo, like they were at the Featherdale Wildlife Park near Sydney. Their enclosure was short enough that you could touch them as they trundled by if you wished. They have quills like a porcupine, but they don’t appear to have the same projectile or barbed nature of porcupine quills. For all of the zoos we have visited though, we have not seen a duck billed platypus. We also haven’t seen a kiwi this trip either. This zoo didn’t have Quokkas, but they had relatives that a bit more rat like called beetongs and potoroos. Since those are nocturnal though, they are hard to spot, and we didn’t spot one. They are apparently quite endangered.
They did have one dingo in an enclosure, but it was sleeping in its little dog house so all we could see was its nose. We did get a good look at a dingo at the Featherdale Wildlife Park, and when we were in a bus in Cairns coming back from the Hartley Crocodile Adventures, Ben saw a dingo cross the roadway ahead of the bus as it was driving through a curvy bit of roadway through some hills. We did learn that Australia has erected a dingo fence that is somewhat akin to Great Wall of China. Instead of keeping the Huns out, it keeps the dingos out. In Queensland, it is referred to as the Great Barrier dog fence, perhaps in homage to the Great Barrier Reef. It runs through parts of New South Wales and South Australia where it is referred to as the South Australian Border Fence or simply the Dog Fence. In total, it is 3,488 miles. Donald Trump only had to fence 1,954 miles to keep his 2016 election promise and utterly failed to deliver on that, having only added 80 miles of new border wall. But in all fairness, it is probably easier to stop a dingo with a fence than a Mexican Human Trafficker.
We did manage to walk through the entire zoo, which closed our exercise rings and was probably a couple of miles in the 2 hrs allotted. We then drove a short distance to the top of Mt. Lofty where there is a restaurant and event center.
There is also a fire watch tower and commemorative monument “Flinders’ Column” that looks a little like a light house, but can also invite other comparisons more suitable to its name. There was a terrible bush fire in 1983 that they refer to as Ash Wednesday, which burned a lot of structures and killed a lot of people. That has lead to more aggressive bush fire management, although we have learned that bush fires are an essential part of the local ecology, so they are probably doing more prescribed burns during times of the year when the risk of life and property damage is minimized.
The lunch was a pleasant surprise, especially after the Fremantle/Perth excursion which left us on our own for lunch. The restaurant served us a nice plate with a fancy salad, quiche Lorraine and very good hot and crispy French fries (they say chips here), and little cakes, coffee and tea.
As a bonus, as we were leaving the restaurant, someone noticed a wild koala taking a nap in a tree right next to the walkway to the parking lot.
The excursion then took us down to downtown Adelaide. Adelaide is a very modern and affluent metropolitan center. Much of that must have come from the mineral wealth that lies beneath the surface of Australia. There are lots of very expensive neighborhoods and there are plenty of private schools and other niceties like a University and state of the art medical center.
There is also a huge naval shipyard that is gearing up to produce a fleet of nuclear submarines using American technology. The infrastructure is going up and the hardest part of getting that whole enterprise rolling is the training of the skilled labor force needed for building nuclear submarines. That’s going to keep Adelaide busy for a while.
We got dropped off downtown where they have free tram service, shopping, and lots of museums. We started at the State Library of South Australia, which has a reading room that has been described as one of the most beautiful libraries in the world. It kind of looks like something out of Hogwarts on the inside, without the 142 constantly changing staircases. It was decorated with a Christmas tree, but there were all sorts of other unusual exhibits inside including exhibits on antique toys.
The next building over was the South Australian Museum, which contains exhibits ranging from meteorites and minerals from Australia, Wildlife and Sea life of Australia, and exhibits of cultural artifacts from Australian Aboriginal tribes and Pacific Islander nations. Oddly, they even had a room with Egyptian mummies and artifacts. It was like visiting the Smithsonian Museum and the British Museum, but with an Australian focus. It was a fantastic museum, and it was FREE!
We got back to our bus shortly before our scheduled departure, but when the bus driver and guide did a head count, one woman was missing. We ended up waiting nearly a half hour for her to show up, and we ended up holding up the ship since being a Princess Excursion, the ship is obligated to wait for us. But the guide and driver will probably get a firm scolding. We were the last to get back on the ship, but it turned out that the ship had to wait for line handlers to finish dealing with another ship in the port before they could cast our lines off.
After dinner, we watched the comedy magician Patrick McCullagh do a new show, and although it was along similar lines, it was with different tricks and new jokes. He did make someone’s $50 bill disappear in the first act, only to reappear at the end of the show inside a can of beans. I’m glad that wasn’t my money.
Our clocks go forward another 30 min tonight. We have a sea day tomorrow before we arrive in Melbourne. That will be the final Progressive Trivia session for this cruise since the last sea day is just before we disembark in Sydney.
