Heading downtown to the South Australian Museum ... by tram! Part One

The South Australian Museum ... great place to be on a hot day!

Ten thousand fascinating things ... plus fantastic air conditioning!

The T-Rex gatekeeper: welcome to the museum! But first ... gotta get there. So --

Catch the tram from Glenelg, over on the coast. You don't want to drive downtown!

Watch out for the tram. They come along every 10 minutes, but when you're waiting it seems sooo long.

Aha, here comes a tram! Too bad it's on the wrong track. It'll go down to the Bay -- the seashore -- and return...

...there it goes, heading down Jetty Road to Moseley Square, near the sea -- about a kilometer away. Patience!

A half hour later, here we are getting off the tram, on Adelaide's North Terrace --

Get ready for traffic! This is why you don't want to be driving downtown --

-- though, the buses are colorful. That's the Tour Downunder advertisement. And see where this bus is going?!

North Terrace is a visual feast of classical architecture --

-- as you walk down to the museum and art gallery, remember to look up.

There's also a wealth of statuary. This cavalry memorial is photogenic from any angle. 

The statue of Aphrodite was the first piece of public art
ever presented to the City of Adelaide ... considered scandalous in its day!

Matthew Flinders, RN. From 1801 to 1803 he commanded the first ship to
circumnavigate Australia.

Victorian era bronze statuary ... wish I'd taken notes!

Advance Australia ... just so you know where you are, right?

The National War Memorial ... the image hardly does it justice.

At last, the museum! And after that hike, the first priority is lunch...

The Baleen Cafe is right there in the museum frontage ...

Nice menu, good prices, and great a/c ... the Baleen Cafe at the museum.

Ooooh, smell that coffee! But we didn't come here just for lunch -- we wanted to see stuff, like...

Dinosaur skeletons: cryolophosaurus, an Antarctic dinosaur... 

...the largest ammonite ever discovered...

...amazing geology from all over the state and country...

...and the wonderful, exotic South Pacific collection. 

There's no better way to escape the heat than to spend a day at the museum ... the only challenge being, you have to get there first. There's a good bus service, but the tram is actually better, and "different." Adelaide has one of the last tram services left in the world. It's a pity they're disappearing, because they're a marvelous cross between bus and train.

The images in this post (and Part Two, tomorrow) are actually from several trips and visits to the museum. Some of the exhibits might have changed, but much doesn't -- can't -- change; and certainly the tram ride is pretty much the same no matter when you do it.

The new trams are very quiet. One has memories of "the old rattlers" which we rode for -- how many decades? Some of those trams were running for most of a century. They probably needed retiring, but they'll be missed. Here was the original, now antique tram --

--and not for nothing were they known as "rattlers!" The new trams are smooth, silent, and actually a pleasure to ride in, but they haven't the character of the old ones. Give 'em fifty years!

You can catch the tram from any part of the route from Glenelg onward. We usually find parking in Glenelg and watch for the next one at the tram stop at the top end of Jetty Road, Glenelg. From there, it must be something like twenty minutes to downtown, and then a hike down North Terrace. The State Library, museum, art gallery, University of Adelaide, Royal, Adelaide Hospital and the botanic gardens are all laid out in a neat row on the north side of the Terrace ... you can't get lost.

First: lunch at the Baleen Cafe: coffee, soup of the day or fish'n'chips, or a Greek salad perhaps, and cool off before heading onward and inward.

In tomorrow's post we'll go inside the museum: dinosaurs, geology, and coolness, while outside it's sizzling...

Glenelg -- on Labour Day, 2011

Somewhere in the Mediterranean, where the celebrities bask? Nope! Glenelg Marina --
that's Glenelg, on the metropolitan beach ... South Australia.

Since it was Labour Day (note Aussie spelling) we decided we'd park on the Patawalonga River and walk...
parking in and around Glenelg was always tight. Lately, it's a joke, especially on any holiday. 

The kilometer or so walk from the Patawalonga takes you past the Glenelg Marina ... the yacht and boat anchorage
serving the very, very upmarket apartment blocks situated between the river and the beach.

Life imitates art. A Pacific Black duck sails across the marina, proving that boats are not the only things
on the water on this bright, hot Labour Day. 

Right beside the marina itself, the million-dollar mansions have private docks. Nice!

The square rigger there ... is actually a replica of HMS Buffalo, and it's a restaurant!

Around on the landward side of the Buffalo ... welcome aboard to fine dining. But --

-- take a moment and look up. This is a actually very good replica of the vessel, rigging and all.

The walk around to Moseley Square, with its cafes, restaurants, and the tram terminal, takes you
right by millionaire country. Shades of Monte Carlo!

How the other half live! These are not hotels, they're apartment blocks, and the cheapest apartment
here is about a million and a half. Bucks, that is.

Glenelg Marina: Imagine having this view from your balcony, over coffee and a croissant for brekkie.

Follow the path around ... you can't miss it, it's marked out with blood-red geraniums!

Look to your right, see the massive whale fluke sculpture, every inch as big as it looks... 

Halfway along the path, at mid-moorings. And yes, the geraniums are in the foreground now...

On the other side of the water: the Marina Pier, lined with exclusive stores, cafes, and a mall.

Right about now, you're wondering how these James Bond-ish boats get out of the marina...
Here's how: the Patawalonga lock gates, and, beyond them...

The marked channel leading right to the open water. That's the Gulf St. Vincent, which provides the
western edge of the city of Adelaide, capital of South Australia.

Look the other way from the Marina Pier, and you catch sight of the ferris wheel
at the amusement park on the foreshore itself. We're going in that direction.

Dogleg through an access path, and shazam! You're right there on the beach, hunting for shade...

Adelaide is bordered for mile after mile by white-gold beaches. Thing is, if this were anywhere in Europe,
you'd be elbowing for space. Here, the beach is wide open ... we like!

Walking away from millionaire land, headed for Moseley Square: catch a glimpse, between Norfolk Island pine trees,
of the clock tower of the historic Glenelg Town Hall, dwarfed by the Stamford Hotel.

And -- get your bearings here -- the "balloon ride" at the park is slowing, slowly turning, away on your left...

...as you stroll past the "wet fun fair," making your way toward...

Glenelg Jetty, at the end of Jetty Road, which feeds right into Moseley Square. 

The landward end of the Glenelg Jetty (extreme right), and the lawns bordering Moseley Square. Walk, around...

Moseley Square, viewed from the west. The jetty is right behind you.

And on the south side of Moseley Square, here's the tram pulling in to the last stop on the line (in other words,
if it doesn't stop here, it'll be in the water. Right.)

A tiny bit of the old Glenelg survives. Here's a clear shot of the Town Hall, right there on the lawns --
today, it's a local cultural museum, housing a potted history of South Australia.

The view looking south from the landward end of Glenelg Jetty. Miles and miles of white beach and green sea.

At least take the opportunity to wiggle your toes in the sand. Turn around, see Moseley Square from the beach...

The monument, celebrating the proclamation of the state, with the flags of Australia and
Aboriginal Australia flying to north and south of it, and the model of HMS Buffalo on top...

No way to get close enough to it to photograph the whole thing, but it reads,
"Here at Holdfast Bay landed the pioneer settlers and Governor Hindmarsh
announced the establishment of the state of South Australia."

The balloon ride is starting to look tempting. Like the ice cream...

Stretching away from Moseley Square, headed north and paralleling the beach, is the Colley Reserve.

Colonies of silver gulls live and fish off every part of the metropolitan beaches...

...and, just so you know where in the world you are ...!

A Cathay Pacific jet departs Adelaide International Airport. The flight path is almost right overhead.
We're lucky enough not to be leaving.

We'd actually forgotten that the coming weekend was the three-day Labour Day holiday, and we'd planned a quick "get out of Dodge, have lunch and recharge the batteries." The plan had seemed so simple: we'd go for lunch in Glenelg and take a walk around the foreshore, the marina, out along the Patawalonga River, and so on ... which was, of course, dependent on being able to find parking in Glenelg itself --

On Labour Day? Suuuuure. Easy, right? Uh huh.

So when the day came around we had several options. Go somewhere else. Stay home. Or, do the whole thing backwards ... park out along the Patawalonga River and walk over to Moseley Square. We decided to do it this way around, so it was all a question of plenty of 30 block and a couple of hats. Labour Day is the first Sunday in October, and this one was hot.  It can also be bucketing down and chilly, but 2011 turned on a scorcher.

We were headed for a Mexican restaurant, Gringos Mexican Cantina -- where the food is actually pretty darned good, which sounds odd because it's Mexican food in Australia, ends of the earth, and all. On Labour Day, you couldn't get a picture of the place for the traffic and crowd, so -- Ma Google to the rescue here. This image was captured from Google Maps. We also got just about the last table, and it was ... noisy. We didn't get the laid-back dining and relaxation we'd been hoping for (while forgetting what day it would be!) but it was a good experience nonetheless.

And there's one thing you can say about brilliant, sunny weather: the pictures will be superb. Nothing has been done to these images, aside from a routine crop and resize. That's what it looked like on the day.

Since we've arrived in Glenelg, on a tram stop ... now, we'll catch that tram at the other end of Jetty Road, Glenelg, and ride it to downtown, for a visit to the Natural History Museum.