Melbourne, Australia--Adelaide, Australia--Day 56

March 26, 2004

Today I flew from Melbourne to Adelaide and was picked up by the same driver who dropped me off when I arrived. He was disappointed that I “didn’t call” to get a ride to the zoo (I totally spaced on where I wrote down his number) and also disappointed that I didn’t go out on the town (a.k.a. go drinking) in Melbourne, but I told him that I had fun anyways.

My flight was short and sweet, they played the morning news and served us a breakfast snack even though it was only an hour long flight. Made it to Adelaide and was picked up by a driver who didn’t quite believe that yes, I was Sarah Galbraith, thank you very much. We headed into town and he dropped me off at my hotel.

After checking in and settling things, I headed out to the zoo which wasn’t too far from where my hotel was (about a 20 min walk) and very close to the University of Adelaide. I took the free bus over to a spot nearby the zoo and walked through campus to get to the entrance, so I just blended right in with my backpack. The bus ride was great-- a free bus! What a concept. At one point it seemed like hundreds of little school girls boarded (they were on a field trip) and so it was very cute seeing them all decked out in their sun hats.

I walked to the zoo and found the hippos with no problem. The only problem was that they both kept swimming around in the water from one end of their pond to the other, so I was literally running (no joke) to catch them come up on one side to take a breath, and then on the other. The school children around me thought that this was quite funny and one could say that I pushed a few kids out of the way to get a good shot. It was more like a light bump. 

The hippos were in full swing and kept coming up to a water faucet that was filtering water into the pond and cleaning their teeth with the blast of water. It was so funny and water kept squirting up everywhere. After a mad rush of small children and their teachers left, I was left alone with the hippos and the zookeeper who magically appeared somewhere in all of the excitement. He told me that the hippos were named Susie and Brutus, but used to be called Victoria and Albert. Hmm…

I got all the pictures and then hit the gift shop, then walked back into town. I got some lunch at a Thai food place (not as good as Thailand really) and then walked around the shops and eventually found out where I was on a map, which was good. I wasn’t too far from the hotel. I stopped by tourist information center and was able to figure out a short trip over to Ayer’s Rock in the next few days before I have to go to Dubbo. It works out perfectly and I was able to get it all arranged and will be setting off tomorrow night on a long, 20 hour bus ride! Oh joy!

After settling things at the tourist office I finally mailed back things that I had acquired along the way in Japan mostly as I was getting nasty looks from the air stewards with my like 6 carryon items. I then boarded the old trolley down to the beach, which was about a half hour’s drive. The beach was great, if not a little bit too windy, and I didn’t swim but I walked along the pier and got some ice cream to eat and watched the sun go down. Then I got back on the tram back to the city center and changed, then went back out on the town, only to find that not only was it Friday night, but it was like student pub crawl night so everywhere was packed. I looked through a few shops and witnessed the most amazing drama unfold in front of me where a girl was almost hysterical saying that she couldn’t go out the door of the store because “he” was out there (I was in Target btw) and she was with like 6 of her friends. So they got a security guard and was trying to work out the best escape route to take. Hmm…who knows. I then grabbed a gyro and then luckily found a movie theater so I went to Girl with a Pearl Earring, which was good, and that’s about it for my day!

For the hippo lovers out there, there won’t be anymore hippo updates until I go to Dubbo in about a week’s time.





(c) 2004 Sarah Galbraith. All Rights Reserved.